Top photographer Drew Doggett picturesquely captures the mystical elegance of horses with Untamed Spirits

Ten years ago, photographer Drew Doggett fell in love with the graceful horses of Sable Island. This encounter marked the beginning of a profound affection for these fascinating animals, leading Doggett to travel the world to photograph various breeds. Untamed Spirits: Horses from Around the World, (teNeues Verlag), is his first coffee table book and the result of his most cherished highlights.

With Untamed Spirits, Drew Doggett (1984, USA) impressively captures the elegance, strength, beauty, sensitivity, and tenderness of horses in 180 black and white and color photographs. Doggett has built a reputation as one of the world's finest equine photographers. His timeless work often exudes a picturesque, serene quality. At the same time, in some series, he draws on his background as a fashion photographer, giving the images a stylized aesthetic. Doggett has won over 130 awards for his photography and (short) films.

Five Chapters

The coffee table book is divided into five chapters, each focusing on a theme about the horses (breeds) and their specific habitats.

For example, Doggett showcases the incredibly strong Icelandic breed that has roamed freely on the island since the Viking Age, where reality and legends are intertwined. The photographer visited six different locations and reveals the raw nature in all its forms, with the mysterious and sometimes solitary Icelandic horse as a recurring motif: under waterfalls, in the sea, across black volcanic sand, and in the snow.

He also traveled to Trinidad and Tobago, where he minimally captured the underwater rhythm of rescue horses that cool off daily by swimming in the crystal-clear water. Here, Doggett sought the artistry of form and texture to photographically record the horses' elegant movements.

In Camargue, Southern France, he photographs the white wild horses known for their spirited and stubborn character, as well as dazzling beauty. This is one of the oldest and untamed breeds in the world, possessing an almost mythical and rebellious status.

In the chapter Equus: Light & Form, Doggett illuminates detailed portraits in a 'fashionable way' of elite sport horses from the dressage, show jumping, and polo world of Wellington, Florida. The photographer zooms in on the physical beauty of muscles, tails, and glistening coats in a studio setting.

The book concludes with his first love: the horses living on the inhospitable and uninhabited Sable Island, Canada. In 2021, he already released a beautiful book about it: Wild: The Legendary Horses of Sable Island, for which primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall wrote the foreword.

Sable Island is one of the purest places on Earth where horses have been able to live freely since colonization. They are the only animals capable of surviving here and are therefore—with a count of 550—the only inhabitants of the island. Drew Doggett made a short documentary about the island and the horses, sharing a link on page 205.