The Dog - 100 Years of Classic Photography - Book Reviews - Review

The Dog - 100 Years of Classic Photography Editor: Ruth Silverman Publisher: Chronicle Books [c] 2000, 160 pages, $24.95

Ruth Silverman runs a photo gallery in Berkeley, CA. In addition to "The Dog - 100 Years of Classic Photography," she has edited "The Dog Observed: Photographs, 1844 to 1988" and "Athletes' Photographs, 1860 to 1986' for the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Shows.

Dogs have been part of our human society for many years: the first dog known to fame is perhaps Ulysses' dog Argus, the only one to recognize him after he returned home from a 20-year absence. Dogs of the 19th and 20th century have been in photos and movies, from Rin-Tin-Tin to Lassie. But perhaps it is in still photography that dogs are best revealed, in their own nature or in friendship and collaboration with humans.

Ruth Silverman has collected some 160 photos of dogs, from about 1900 to the present. Selected from formal portraits to unstructured "snaps," from comic to sentimental, from city to country, the images are sharply reproduced and always interesting.

The grandest dog is probably Caesar, portrayed with his master, King Edward VII. Anonymous mongrels from Harlem or the back streets of Glasgow recapture the "Family of Man" style of photographic reporting. And there is parody too -- Paul Andrew Wegner takes an "Ansel Adams" type rock photo at Joshua Tree National Monument with, only visible after close scrutiny, a tiny image of a dog looking up to where his master is presumably rock-climbing.

Altogether, a consistently entertaining photo-book that gives the aspiring dog photographer a wealth of suggestive techniques.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Photographic Society of America, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group