Max.
Date: February, 1972
Place: Olympia Exhibition Centre, near Hammersmith, west London.
Modus operandi: Usual stealth gear – scruffy jacket, worn jeans, generally unkempt.
Weather: Indoor arena at Cruft’s Dog Show.
Time: 11am
Gear: Leica M3, 90mm Elmar
Medium: Kodak TriX – the single greatest monochrome emulsion ever made, underexposed one stop at 800ASA in this case.
Me: Simply electrified at the abundance of subject matter all around.
My age: 20
The Story: I have never met a dog I did not like. Fact is, I’m writing this on the sofa with Bertram the Border Terrier looking over my shoulder. Indeed, life without a pup in the home would be a far sadder affair. Who can equal a good dog’s love, loyalty and adulation? You come home, beat. The firm just went belly up. Your car got hit on the way home. Your wife left you for another woman. But the greeting from the pup is always the same. A wagging tail, joyous body language and that wet nose looking for an unsuspecting piece of exposed flesh. And suddenly life doesn’t seem so bad.
Having watched the world’s greatest dog show on the BBC for years (back then there were three TV channels in England – BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV; standards were never higher) it didn’t need much of an excuse to drag my newly acquired Leica with the 90mm Elmar for some character studies to the show center. A wonderful environment and if you know dog people, well, there were as many varieties on display as there were breeds.
Much of this sort of show demands patience, more than anything, from the owners and handlers (back then, they were one and the same before professionalism imported from the USA’s Westminster Dog Show pointed to the need to separate the roles); there’s a lot of waiting, during which time you groom your charge, feed him snacks and generally fret over whether the whiskers are just so.
On an ethical point, it is very easy for a photographer to ridicule the owners and their pets. Such crass behavior held no more interest for me then than it does today. Let it remain the province of photojournalists. Further, the general, stereotypical, dog-and-owner lookalike stuff had been done ad infinitum. No, I was looking for something odd, and in my book ‘odd’ means ‘funny’. Anyone can do ‘woe is me’ drama; ‘funny’ is much harder.
Of all the noble breeds God has placed on this earth, few can match the qualities of the wolfhound. Standing proud to a man’s waist, the animal has large reserves of dignity and decency. Add a magnificent skull, a discreet grey coat and the flowing movement of a ballerina, and you have a special animal indeed. And, boy, do those wolfhound chaps have a sense of humor or what? This character was bored of standing around while others ahead in the line were being subjected to all sorts of indignities and gropes. That’s the judging process for you.
So he did what any rational being would, in the circumstances. He cocked an eye this way and that. Just curious. Only snag was, the owner’s Harris Tweeds were in the way, so he had to give the jacket’s flap a good shove to get it out of the way, allowing him to grab a clandestine glimpse at the lady of his desire.
Lucky? Nah, you make your luck.
Look what that sly devil Max was up against.
Can you say perfection in gear choice? Leica M3, 90mm Elmar lens, TriX.
I couldn’t afford the faster Elmarit or the exotic Summicron, so I simply underexposed by one stop and cooked the film a couple of minutes longer in the developer. F/4 was never faster! I doubt the shutter was any shorter than 1/30th, as the blurred negative suggests. And to hell with the grain.
Anyway, when Max (he has to have been named Max, don’t you think?) decided to poke about with his gorgeous snout just so, all that was left for me to do was press the button. The lady’s amply filled tweed skirt was just the icing on the cake.
Dear sweet Max. I love you to this day.
Woof!
