A CAGED DOG BARKS THE FIERCEST

Mexico City / CDMX, 2024

Photography, conversations, publication and exhibition

Mirror portrait with a doubled face, from A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest, Mexico City, 2024, by Ryan O’Toole Collett.

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest was made during periods living in Mexico City in 2024. I arrived without intending to make a project. Moving through the city by bus and metro, conversations around the election, violence, gender, power, gentrification and the assumptions I brought with me began to shape the work.

The portraits developed through introductions, invitations and overlapping friendships rather than by approaching strangers at random. Alongside them are cropped phone photographs of streets, walls, transport, objects and residues: partial views that refuse to stand in for the city as a whole.

In the book, 30 voices are presented in Spanish and English separately from the portraits. Names are not tied to faces; looking and reading are held apart. That distance is deliberate. The work asks what a photograph can show, what it cannot, and what we bring to the act of looking.

VOICES

The 30 conversations are presented in Mexican Spanish and English, independently from the photographs. Names are not tied to faces: a voice does not explain an image, and a portrait cannot provide complete access to a person.

PUBLICATION

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest was self-published by This Is This Editions in May 2025, with support from Dover Street Market.

The bilingual hardback brings the photographs together with 30 voices in Mexican Spanish and English. The interviews are held separately from the portraits rather than functioning as captions, leaving a deliberate distance between looking and reading.

First edition: 250 copies
Clothbound, thread-sewn hardback with photographic tip-on and printed endpapers
230 × 307 mm
Editor and designer: Frankie Moutafis
Copy editor: Isabel O’Toole Jiménez
Printed by Die Keure, Belgium
ISBN 978-1-0369-1807-1

Stockists: Dover Street Market · IDEA · Village Books · 1909 Bookstore, Paris

Printed endpaper pattern from the A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest photobook by Ryan O’Toole Collett.

CIRCULATION

The book was launched at Dover Street Market London on 15 May 2025, during Photo London.

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest photobook displayed at Dover Street Market London during Photo London 2025.

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest, Dover Street Market London, Photo London 2025.

EXHIBITION

Allotment Gallery, London
27 November–1 December 2025

A Caged Dog Barks the Fiercest, Allotment Gallery, London, 2025.