“I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation,” said the French-born photographer Elliott Erwitt in 1998. A few months earlier, looking back on his archive of “amateur” pictures, he realized that dogs were a subject he had compulsively documented over the years. “Dogs make easy, uncomplaining targets,” he explained, “without the self-conscious hang-ups and possible objections of humans caught on film.”
Erwitt, who died in 2023, at 95, was known for his photographs of benevolent irony. Many featured our four-legged friends. Basset hounds and golden retrievers, tongues out, lounging in the grass, guarded by their human companions. Airedale terriers fetching sticks. Highland terriers leaping with joy. A Scottish terrier who stands alone, fur matching the surrounding trees.
