Walking The Dog

Yesterday I mentioned photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue (1894-1986). This photo of a woman walking her dogs in the Bois de Boulogne was taken the year after the great flood of Paris, in 1911 when Lartigue was only seventeen. Already, his work displays a satirical bent that often goes unnoticed in Lartigue's work, for what we see here is a phenomenon - dogs as accessories.

From an article La Belle et La Bette from the 1 May 1914 issue of Femina there is this: “You know the old theory of the ‘revulsioinist’, according to which beautiful women choose ugly friends! Lacking ugly friends, certain coquettes are enlisting le bull, the most frightful of dogs as everyone knows, to play the role of revulsionist.” The magazine was well behind illustrators in noticing. Edward Penfield for Harper's and G. K. Benda for the music-hall artist Mistinguett date from 1907.

Dogs had become accessories for women, deployed for their visual qualities just as hats and parasols were. Greyhounds, borzois and collies were the aristocrats among dogs while terriers, bulldogs and spaniels were “ fur on legs”, especially convenient if you couldn't afford a fur coat. Satirists like SEM, Jacques Wely and Gus Bofa toyed with the the dogs’ unwitting tendency to reveal the pretensions of their owners.

Big dogs, little dogs...Robert Lloyd Wildhack's dog strikes a pose for Scribners' Magazine or Mehla Kohler's dachshunds, who look like they might bolt if given a chance, createdfor the Wiener Werkstaette's postcard series, take your pick.