Order your copy of The Dogist: Photographic Encounters with 1000 Dogs!
If you don’t know who the Dogist is—where have you been?! Oct. 20th marked the release of his first book, The Dogist, featuring over 1,000 of the world’s most photogenic dogs!
The Dogist (allegedly a human named Elias Friedman) has spent the last two years traveling the world to meet a few good pups and take their picture. His work has been featured on BarkPost and a bunch of other big names in the dog scene.
BarkPost was lucky enough to score an interview with Earth’s ultimate phodographer and got all the answers you’ve been burning to learn!
When asked why he chose the handle “The Dogist,” he explained that he was inspired by The Sartorialist, a similar blog that focuses on the lives of hoomans. Which makes sense to dog lovers. I mean, it’s not like he was going to be The Catist or anything, right?
“Well, I never had a cat and there aren’t many cats walking around on the street,” The Dogist said. “Dogs are also much easier to photograph and have more expressive faces and variety of breed characteristics. The prospect of chasing cats underneath people’s furniture in their smelly apartments isn’t that appealing to me either.”
So of all the -ists he could be he definitely picked the best. But what does it mean to take a picture of a dog?
As simple as it sounds, The Dogist finds the results much more complicated. “Some images tell a story about what a dog is thinking, some about where they are, some about who the owner is,” he says. “I think the simplicity comes in that I publish traditional portraits of individuals with short, objective captions, and the simple general theme: pictures of dogs.” But the stories told by the images are boundless.
I imagine it would be difficult to capture such serene images of our frenetic little friends, but The Dogist insists it’s a quick process: “I always make a quick connection with the dog, either by letting them smell me or calling their name. But otherwise it’s very quick – only a minute really.”
Hmmm. I think that when he said “connection” he meant to say “I pump them full of treats.” But I let his euphemisms slide when his answer to my next question caught me off guard. When asked what still surprises him about dogs, his answer steered the conversation from canines humans.
He said he was most surprised that “not everyone likes [dogs].” A professional to the core, though, The Dogist humbly abstains from judgement, adding “I think you have to take the dog’s point of view: a dog is a dog is a dog.” And we know dogs would simply accept those folks for who they are.
When asked why this book wasn’t written by dogs, since they’re so great and all, The Dogist wisely responded “They were too busy smelling butts, a far more noble pursuit.” Truly a phodographer who knows his subject.
Order your copy of The Dogist: Photographic Encounters with 1000 Dogs!
The attached digital image file(s) may be used solely in connection with the promotion of The Dogist. You must include the credit line: “Excerpted from The Dogist by Elias Weiss Friedman (Artisan Books). Copyright © 2015. Photographs by The Dogist, LLC.” adjacent to the image and retain any credit, copyright, image identification and associated metadata as part of the digital file.
