PHOTO
Dogs of the World
Craig Turner-Bullock
Bateman Books
Reviewed by Anne Stevens
This is a photography book that might well appeal to a diverse group: photographers, dog people, and people with an interest in origins.
It might appeal solely because it is beautiful.
The dogs are featured in their homelands across 21 different countries and some 70 different breeds, grouped by terriers, herding, hounds, guardian, companion, Northern, primitive dogs and landraces.
There are far too many wonderful photographs to mention in detail but there are three that perhaps convey the magnitude of this work of photography, which was years in the making.
The Indian caravan hound is remarkable standing with the Taj Mahal dimly behind him rendered ghostly by Agra’s winter haze.
The sculptural ribs of the dog reflect his breeding was for racing after prey.
The photograph of two beagles, Lucy and Archie, standing at the rocky edge of a pool in Glencoe, Scotland, reflected perfectly in the glassy water, makes you long to be there with them for the hunt.
Everyone will have their favourites, but it is hard to resist a laugh for the dandie dinmonts, Clementine and Lucy. These dogs have sound literary origins.
In Sir Walter Scott’s 1815 novel, Guy Mannering, the character Dandie Dinmont owned a pack of six terriers — Auld Pepper, Auld Mustard, Young Pepper, Young Mustard, Little Pepper and Little Mustard — beginning the first recorded dog craze.
The name stuck and the breed took off.
Clementine and Lucy are wonderfully scruffy specimens, irresistible in their small fluffiness and twinkly eyes.
The literary connections of the dandie dinmont continued by reason of their ownership by famous British authors, namely Dame Agatha Christie and Gerald Durrell.
However, they are now considered a vulnerable native breed in the United Kingdom, with less than 100 puppies registered annually.
Clementine and Lucy were photographed at Bowhill House, the ancestral seat of the Duke of Buccleuch.
The house holds the first known depiction of a dandie dinmont, painted by Sir Thomas Gainsborough in 1770.
Clementine and Lucy seem entirely at home.
Christchurch-based Craig Turner-Bullock has been a professional pet photographer since 2001.
He is a Grand Master of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography (NZIPP) and was the first to win a portrait category at the NZIPP Iris Awards with a non-human subject.
Anne Stevens KC is a Dunedin barrister