Ann-Janine Morey

Picturing Dogs, Seeing Ourselves


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       PICTURING DOGS, SEEING OURSELVES

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      image ANIMALIBUS VOL. 4 OF ANIMALS AND CULTURES

      Nigel Rothfels and Garry Marvin,

      GENERAL EDITORS

      ADVISORY BOARD:

      Steve Baker

       University of Central Lancashire

      Susan McHugh

       University of New England

      Jules Pretty

       University of Essex

      Alan Rauch

       University of North Carolina at Charlotte

      Books in the Animalibus series share a fascination with the status and the role of animals in human life. Crossing the humanities and the social sciences to include work in history, anthropology, social and cultural geography, environmental studies, and literary and art criticism, these books ask what thinking about nonhuman animals can teach us about human cultures, about what it means to be human, and about how that meaning might shift across times and places.

      OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES:

      Rachel Poliquin, The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and the Cultures of Longing (VOLUME 1)

      Joan B. Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist, eds., Gorgeous Beasts: Animal Bodies in Historical Perspective (VOLUME 2)

      Liv Emma Thorsen, Karen A. Rader, and Adam Dodd, eds., Animals on Display: The Creaturely in Museums, Zoos, and Natural History (VOLUME 3)

       PICTURING DOGS, SEEING OURSELVES

      [VINTAGE AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS]

       ANN-JANINE MOREY

      THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS,

      UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA

      Copyright © 2014

      The Pennsylvania State University

      All rights reserved

      Printed in Korea by Pacom

      Published by The Pennsylvania State

      University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003

      The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.

      It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

      FRONTISPIECE: Unused RPPC, 1910–1918, 8.6 × 13.8 cm.

      Designed by Regina Starace

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Morey, Ann-Janine, author.

      Picturing dogs, seeing ourselves : vintage American photographs / Ann-Janine Morey.

      p. cm — (Animalibus : of animals and cultures ; Volume 4)

      Summary: “Explores antique photographs of people and their dogs to expand the understanding of visual studies, animal studies, and American culture. Uses the canine body as a lens to investigate the cultural significance of family and childhood portraits, pictures of hunters, and racially charged images”—Provided by publisher.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-271-06331-7 (cloth : alk. paper)

      1. Photography of dogs 2. Human-animal relationships—United States. 3. Dogs—Symbolic aspects—United States. I. Title. II. Series: Animalibus ; v. 4.

      TR729.D6M67 2014

      779'.329772—dc 3

      2013046852

      FOR MY PARENTS

      Donald Franklin Morey and Martha Ann (Ballew) Morey

       CONTENTS

       PREFACE: SOME WORDS ABOUT THE PICTURES

       ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

       Introduction: Romancing the Dog

       [1] The Visual Rhetoric of Everyday People

       [2] The Dog on the Table: From The Great Gatsby to the Great White Middle Class

       [3] The Gaze Outside the Frame

       [4] Family Portraits

       [5] Hunting Pictures and Dog Stories

       [6] Women Cross the Line

       Conclusion: The Dog in the Picture

       NOTES

       BIBLIOGRAPHY

       INDEX

       PREFACE

      [SOME WORDS ABOUT THE PICTURES]

      I began my career as a religious studies professor, but I’ve been an English professor for the last twenty years, so it’s safe to say that no matter where I’ve been in my career, I’ve lived by words, if not “the word.” I never planned on writing a book about pictures, although I have always had dogs, as have my sister and my brother, the latter of whom is the anthropologist who documents the funerary tenderness between dogs and ancient human civilizations (see the introduction). Yet my own family history I pretty much took for granted until one day—sometime in the mid-1990s—I was reading a library book and a picture fell from its pages. It was a trimmed snapshot of a woman sitting on the grass with her dog, probably dating from the 1920s. The original is sepia toned, which adds to the gentleness of the image, but I was pleased with the way in which the woman was gazing so thoughtfully at the dog, who is occupied with something beyond the frame but leaning comfortably against her. I kept the picture because I liked it, not anticipating how much I would later enjoy the symbolism of having the image come tumbling from the words.

      Several years later I was rummaging around in an antique store and decided to flip through the photo postcards. I came across two more pictures. One of them is a small image of a pretty young woman who has posed herself and her dogs for a picture. She’s thoughtfully provided not only a chair for one dog but also a blanket to cushion the chair for the alert dog, and her proprietary hand indicates her ownership of