Man & Dog
by Martin Agius
“A man's soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog.” Charles Doran
I have always been fascinated by how dogs love human beings. There are many people who consider dogs to be members of their families because of their loyalty, companionship, and unconditional love.
I have always wanted to have a dog, but when I used to live with my mum, she never wanted one. I grew up and got married, and my wife kept asking me to get a dog, and I always said no for the very simple reason that I didn’t have much time and I loved to travel a lot.
Last year, I was on a journalistic job where the authorities seized around fifty dogs from a guy who was mistreating the dogs, and many of them were sick. I felt so sorry for them, and I nearly cried too. All of a sudden, I decided I wanted to adopt one of these dogs. When I told my wife, she was over the moon.
I started contacting the authorities, and I even asked for help from people who worked in animal welfare. After a few days, I got the sad news that the dogs were so sick, many were blind, and they were also crossbred, so there was not much hope for them. I was so saddened by this news, and when I told my wife, she was really upset.
I told my wife that we should adopt a dog, and she agreed. I did the necessary things by applying and filling out forms, but I found a lot of red tape, and things were really becoming difficult. I know that these things shouldn’t be easy, but why all this hassle when you can go and buy a dog and have no hassle? So we decided to buy a dog, and we decided to buy a Beagle. I searched for Beagle breeders and started calling them, but no one had any puppies for sale. Finally, we found a breeder who had a female Beagle for sale, the last one from the litter. We went to see her, and we immediately fell in love with her. We bought her and made the necessary arrangements with the authorities to register her in our name. Her name was Holly, and we decided to keep it.
She really changed our lives. My wife was really happy, but we were feeling sorry for Holly, as when we went to work, she was alone. We were discussing this matter and thinking of adopting a dog so she will have company when we are not home. Out of the blue, the wife of the breeder that we bought Holly from asked my wife if she would like to adopt a Papillon dog that she had bred but never sold. She was willing to give it to us for free, as she knew from my wife’s Facebook how well-treated and loved Holly was. She told her that we would go and see the Papillon and bring Holly with us, so we'll see if they will go along. When we arrived and introduced them together, they immediately made friends with each other and started playing. We ended up taking the Papillon named Benz home with us. We made the necessary arrangements with the authorities to register him in our name and also rename him Gilmore. Life really became good, and we are a big family now.
Since we had the dogs, I started looking at people with dogs from a different perspective. When I am out for Street Photography, people with dogs started attracting me more. However, as Joel Meyerowitz points out, sometimes going through your photographs will reveal a pattern. It is so true. A few days ago I shot two guys with a dog in their arms, and an idea came to mind to make a project or series called Man and Dog.
When I found some time, I went through my Street Photography collections in Lightroom, and I really found the pattern that Joel Meyerowitz describes. I was shooting "Man and Dog" for so many years, but it never occurred to me that I was doing so. I found many images from Malta, but also from London, Brussels, Sicily, Milan, Matera, and Rome. I made a new collection, and obviously, I named it Man and Dog. But not only that, but I also had some images of "Woman and Dog," which I decided to make into a collection and project. These will be ongoing projects with others that I already have.
Going out to shoot with multiple projects in mind will be more fruitful than going out with just one project. Going out with just one project will make it much harder to go home with an image, but going out with multiple projects in mind increases the chances of capturing one image for a project are much better. Sometimes we still go home with nothing, but that is OK. The main thing was that we went out, trained our minds and eyes, walked, relaxed our minds, had a coffee or beer, and enjoyed ourselves.
In the future watch out for the Woman & Dog Series which I am still building up.
Where's My Man?
Look at me
Gotcha
Off to Work the Fields
Watching You