expected to keep those unseemly emotions under control. In the title of one of her chapters, she summarizes one reason why we humans are so devoted to our dogs. It is their ability to convince us that we are the recipients of “unconditional love,” a quality of loyalty and dedication uncomplicated by sexuality or ambiguity. Moreover, dog love (our love for them, theirs for us) occupies “an emotional place that is not determined by sex or gender,” or for that matter by race, nationality, or age.32 Dogs seem to look beyond our physical selves and our faulty selves and lovingly accept the best parts of us.
In addition to their emotional and spiritual contribution to our lives, dogs have provided necessary services to human beings. Dogs hunted, herded, and guarded precious livestock, goods, and families. They pulled carts, wagons, and sleds—from door to door or across forbidding frontier expanses. They were playmates and companions. Children who saw their parents harness a horse for travel played with their dog by harnessing their patient pet to a wagon or cart. Or perhaps the parents colluded in that play, as we see in figure 7. This is “King the Alsatian Husky” and Spaulding T. Eaid, who is five months and seventeen days old, and not yet ready to hold the reins. Spaulding is propped up in a sulky. There are many play pictures like this from the turn of the century, often with older children who are perfectly capable of driving the dog. But at one time folks might have expected to harness the dog as a means of conveyance, and sometimes for more serious purposes than backyard play. Figure 8 is an early image showing a young woman, possibly Chinese, in her driving rig, which could have been originally intended for a pony but seems well adapted for a dog. In a much later photograph, “Carlo” is the dog power behind John M. Tuttle’s wheelchair, which has been constructed so that he can steer as the dog pushes (figure 9). Today, dogs still play a vital role for disabled persons, as well as serving as guardians and protectors in a larger cultural sense—they are used in police, military, and forensic work because of their keen sense of smell and their ability to understand the task before them. Their persistence and empathy has touched and supported humans through many a cultural upheaval. The dogs brought to Ground Zero to find survivors and victims have been lionized in a variety of publications and anniversary commemorations of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center.33 Studies of the World Trade Center’s dogs and their handlers after those traumatic events are producing medical and mental health insights, as we use the experience of dogs to better understand our own.34
FIGURE 7
Spaulding T. Eaid and King the Alsatian Husky. Used RPPC, 1907–1920, 12.1 × 8.9 cm.
FIGURE 8
CDV, 1860s, 9.2 × 5.6 cm. Photograph by Ladd. Laconia, New Hampshire.
FIGURE 9
John M. Tuttle and Carlo. RPPC, 1926–1939, 13.1 × 8.2 cm. Davenport, Washington.
Finally, dogs provide the not inconsiderable service of companionship and entertainment. In the United States, it is this feature of dogs that largely defines their presence in our lives today, and we are accustomed to a culture that dotes on dogs, sometimes to extremes. At the same time, we are aware that dogs (and often other animals) are exploited, witness reports about dog-fighting rings and puppy mills. Sadly, the history of humans and dogs is filled with as many stories of our cruelty and indifference as of our admiration and love. And yet, no matter how we treat them, dogs come back. They are part of the picture even when we didn’t plan for it (figure 10).
FIGURE 10
Snapshot, 1920s, 7.7 × 10.5 cm.
The dogs in Picturing Dogs are witnesses whose bodies and presence speak far beyond the literal. Could we achieve some of these insights using other kinds of photographs, some other animal? Yes and no. For me, the dog was an accidentally chosen sorting device, and perhaps I might have assembled a different group of antique photographs to much the same effect. Thus the question must be posed another way: what does the canine bring to a photo that is not available in its absence? First, it adds a relational element that complicates the way in which we view the subject. Like occupational implements in photographs, the dog is part of the human subject’s self-definition, and the staging of the photograph offers insight into the various meanings that can accrue around the canine body. A sitter stooping to greet a dog chooses a different presentation from the sitter who has selected a formal setting, where the human and canine never touch. Moreover, although both may be isolated from the human, a canine posed at the feet occupies a different meaning space from the canine perched on a table. As I argue throughout this book, the canine body is symbolic of cultural values that still define our family life today. These images are not merely illustrative. They are part of a visual history whose import we have felt and internalized.
FIGURE 11
Used RPPC, 1912–1915, 8.7 × 14 cm.
Second, the dog also adds a compositional element that enriches the photograph. Even if all of these pictures could have been taken without the dog, many of them would be diminished, if not disintegrated, by the loss of the dog. In figure 11, it is impossible to imagine the man without his dog. They are entwined, and the note scribbled on the back does nothing to disentangle or separate the two: “Who is this” could refer to the man, the dog, or both. They belong together. Similarly, the exuberant energy of the toddler and her setter in figure 12 makes a captivating image. Either subject could have stood alone for a portrait and made a pleasant image, but their shared energy animates the portrait in a way that neither could have accomplished alone. Obviously, not all photographs with dogs will offer interesting aesthetic or compositional dimensions. Sometimes the living dog is merely a prop, and eliminating the dog from the picture would not change the overall suggestion of the image, although even that comment tells us something about the sitter, as we learn more about the use of the dog in photographic composition.
FIGURE 12
Cabinet card, 1900–1910, 8.8 × 12.2 cm. Photograph by Hatton. Lansing, Michigan.
Third, seeing dogs in pictures enhances our sense of the humanity of our forebears, especially when we consider how messy and even fragile an enterprise dog ownership was at the turn of the century. Flea control, now a matter of a monthly dose between the shoulder blades, would have been a constant issue in the spring and summer months (and in the South, all year round). Distemper and rabies vaccines were not developed until the late 1920s, so that loving a dog (as opposed to simply owning one) would have subjected one to predictable and periodic loss.
Fourth, unlike any other animal, “home is where the dog is.”35 Certainly in American photography, the dog becomes part of the patriotic iconography embracing all the meanings of home—family, fidelity, comfort, protection, nurturance, and love—as well