My love affair with dogs began at birth with my family’s black Cocker Spaniel. It was short lived as Sambo was given away six months later – considered “too overprotective” – leaving a longing and appreciation that exists to this day. At the age of 7, I was taken to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City (founded in 1877), igniting my childhood desire to become a dog breeder which lasted until my teens.
I have been fortunate to have had two dogs of my own; a Tibetan Spaniel who lived to 18 and currently a 6 year old Papillon. What has endured is an empathy and love for dogs. I stop and communicate with every dog I meet around the world and, of course, photograph them.
These photographs were made on the first day of the 138th Westminster Dog Show in 2014. My eye is intuitively caught by a gesture, an expression, both of an individual dog and its relation to its human companion. Photographing in black and white conveys a timelessness which echoes the cave paintings of the earliest domesticated dogs/wolves of thousands of years ago.
Felicia Murray
