Daniel Sachon loves bitches! Both female and the canine variety.

BITCHES in an-on-the nose provocation. Bitches: women and dogs, hardly a subtle connotation. But that’s the point, and can’t you take a joke? Especially when it’s this gorgeous. You might laugh if you weren’t drooling.

The ironic wink in BITCHES is of course intentional. The obvious amalgamation of chicks-n-dogs knowingly belies a sophistication. Sachon’s bitches are not the basic variety. Rather, his aesthetic channels famed feminist scholar Jo Freeman’s 1968 ‘Bitch Manifesto’ declaration: ‘We must be strong … we must be dangerous. We must realize that Bitch is Beautiful and that we have nothing to lose.’

When the concept of femininity has never been more wonderfully nebulous, these images cast a variety of women in all their diversities as self-professed bitches. Roald Dahl named his infamous collection of erotic short stories (originally written for Playboy magazine between 1965-74) Switch Bitch. In Sachon’s images, the bitch switches from female to canine. Seduction and satire are running themes in both.

Hemmingway often referred to his lascivious female protagonists as ‘bitch-goddesses’. Though we’ve come leaps and bounds from Hemmingway’s feminine archetypes, vestiges of a bitch-godess sentiment are to be found here. With bombastic high glamour, lashings of camp, and a clear reverence for the women (and pooches) that are his subjects, BITCHES is Sachon’s wry smiled riposte to a once derogatory slander of the feminine condition.

‘You bitch!’ … What an accolade! Woof!