Dog days

Besides his daily newspaper photography,  my partner John Denniston has had photographs published in Life, Time, People and Maclean's magazines. But it's still kind of a thrill to be on the same wall as Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, even if the topic is dogs. John's  (and Erwitt's) photos are part of the summer-long Dog Days exhibition at the swanky new Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver. The framed black and white photo to John's immediate left is Erwitt's -- the big colour photos to his bottom left and right are his, shown below.

This photo was taken for a Day in the Life shoot for the Driftwood newspaper on Saltspring Island in 2006. I thought it was one of the few photos in the Polygon exhibit that showed a happy dog behaving naturally. 

Kudos to the Polygon Gallery for admitting there is another side to dog ownership; the poop issue. John took this photo of a vacant lot pocked with dog-poop bags in 2015. Shortly after he posted this photo on his blog, the lot was cleaned up.

Way back in 1973, when West Broadway was much less developed, John spotted this sign and its accompanying dog.

John and I laughed when he was invited to submit dog photographs to the Polygon Gallery, the premiere new space for photography exhibitions in Metro Vancouver. After a lifetime of covering significant issues and events – breaking news, crime, politics, sports and social issues – as a news photographer, John’s debut in a major Metro gallery was to be about ….dogs.

Dogs are the cotton candy of the newspaper world – something to brighten the often-disheartening menu of regular news, but they get no respect from “serious” journalists. At one point, the popular-tabloid Province where John was a photographer ran so many ‘lost dog’ stories that he began a mock contest, handing out gold stars to his beleaguered colleagues for each dog-related photo taken. How many different ways are there to illustrate an absent dog?  

But dogs are a big part of everyday life, which John is always recording, so of course he had dog pictures. The gallery chose three of them. They sit nicely now among about 90 dog photos, old and new, stiff and joyous, local and international, in the gallery’s summer-long Dog Days exhibition.

Many of the photos are from anonymous sources, but the show includes some big names, including Elliott Erwitt of the prestigious Magnum international photo cooperative. Not that we’re competitive, but John and I did note that John had three photographs in the exhibition while Erwitt had only two.

This is the Elliott Erwitt photograph next door to John's on the gallery wall. It was taken on a New York street in 1974, and gives a worm's eye view of a dressed-up Chihuahua, a woman's booted legs and the feet of some giant dog like a Great Dane. We don't know if the Great Dane had to wear a toque and sweater too.

Many of the photos on display showed dogs dressed up in bizarre outfits. This is a very old one, but the practice continues today. I'm not sure how much dogs enjoy being buttoned and bowed and posed. 

There's nothing unnatural about this dog. I loved the outrageous angle and that great big mouth. The 1990 photo, called Moxy, is by local photographer Jeff Henschel.

This anonymous photo, called Kids and Dogs at Play, takes me back to the era when children dressed like little adults and dutifully posed for family photos. The dog looks like a bigger version of Skippy, our childhood pet.

This is a photo I took this year of my niece Aya and her daughter Emi playing with Millie, who belongs to my niece Kat and her husband Maynard. I'm including it here because it is the kind of picture I think was largely missing from the Dog Days exhibition ; photos showing the simple joyful connection between dogs and humans. 

And for the same reason, I include this one of my sister Betty and her dog Molly in Quebec. The connection between those two is wonderful to behold. 

Molly in nature with stick. No bizarre hats or shirts. Dogs the way they should be.