Prince and Other Dogs, 1850-1940
I believe these photographs are a testimony to the extraordinary relationship that can exist between dogs and people: dogs that you know were loved companions of people living on their own, dogs that were included in photographs as important members of a family or group.Some of the photographs are hilarious (how often it really is true that dogs look like their owners!) and some I find incredibly moving. These are the ones, taken in areas like the East End of London, where the price of the photograph would have represented a substantial part of the owner's weekly income. Often these dogs are grey in the muzzle and you imagine that time to capture their likeness was running out.But, funny or sad, for me these frozen moments capture, not only the passion we can have for dogs, but also the fleeting transience of life: dogs' lives are poignantly short - so too are people's.The book is book is dedicated to the people and dogs in the photographs.