This is my second most favorite picture of Bob. Bob is a thinker. He has a huge vocabulary, maybe over a hundred words. His favorite words are walk?, dog park?, beach?, squirrel!, rabbit!, dinner?, but he understands more sophisticated words, like let's go to bed, stop barking, be nice. The be nice command I always have to say when someone shows up at the door, or another dog starts to smell him at a dog park. I always see him trying to figure things out, trying to understand something unfamiliar. During this snowfall, the first really good one in a couple of years, he kept looking up at the sky, trying to figure out what that white stuff falling down was.

This is my favorite picture of my dog Bob. I like it because it takes a little while to see the bird, and when you see it you realize this is not a cute pet picture. I think I'll throw up if I watch one more cute pet picture or video in the internet.  Bob actually didn't kill this bird. That was done by Che, our cat. Che goes out every morning in the summer and catches a bird, kills it, and hides the bird in the bushes, where Bob finds them. All our neighbors hate Che, because he gets the birds in their gardens and brings them home. My wife and I hate Che too, when he does his bird thing, but we can't keep him inside. I guess it's his nature at work.  

I moved to NYC in 1981. I thought I was a pretty good photographer and felt ready to make a go at it in the art world. I got a loft in TriBeca,  looked for magazine work and tried to get galleries to show my work. Initially, I failed miserably on both counts. I quickly started running out of money. Since I had no money to go out and do things in the city, I stayed in the loft and photographed my loft mate, Ernie, the cat.  I took 10,000 pictures of Ernie and had a few shows in not-for-profit galleries.  Everyone seemed to really like the pictures. At the end of the month I was always short on what I needed for the rent, so I would set up in the corner of West Broadway and Broome Street, put up a good selection of Ernie pictures and sell them for $50 till I made the rent shortfall. One day, Mary Ellen Marks walked by, looked at the pictures, turned towards me, and asked me if I was the photographer. I said yes. She came up to me and kissed me in my mouth. Another day a curator from the Museum of Modern Art passed by and told me what I was doing was very bad for my career. The museum had recently bought some of my pictures. On days when the pictures weren't selling, I would lift the sign and expose the $40 sign underneath. If the day was still slow, I would tear that one up and expose the $30 sign. Usually the $40 sign did the trick and I would meet the rent.

Dog Photography/Art Photography

This is a picture of my dog Bob. Many years ago I broke into the field of photography by publishing a very successful book about a cat. The book, Ernie: A Photographer's Memoir, proved to be a steady seller for 18 years. It's finally dying now. I promised myself that I wouldn't do another animal book, since I didn't want to be known as an animal photographer. I wanted to be an art photographer, and no one takes you seriously if you do pet projects. So I did 4 other books, including a book that combined pictures with short stories related to the pictures. The other books didn't sell as well as the cat book. And in any case, no one took me too seriously as an art photographer.

So I'm thinking of doing another pet book. In fact, an editor told me once that any book with a dog on the cover was good for at least 10,000 copies sold.

So I'm getting older now, and I would like to do another book that sells, preferably one with a dog on the cover. Here is where Bob comes in. I've taken around 20,000 pictures of Bob, so I'm confident I can find a great cover picture. I'm not too sure, though, why anyone would want to buy a book of pictures of my dog, and it's looking like finding a publisher is proving to be more difficult in these challenging financial times. But I will keep you posted.

Bob pictures can be seen here.