Stephen Albair – Dogs – PhotoBook Journal

Review by Hans Hickerson ·

A photographer working outside the mainstream has advantages and challenges. The challenges include not being networked as an insider and sustaining belief in yourself when you are unknown. Among the advantages is the enormous benefit of seeing with fresh eyes, along with the ability to follow your own path without concern for established conventions.

Stephen Albair has seemingly done that with Dogs. A disarmingly unconventional and original book, it pays affectionate homage to man’s best friend. Built around a collection of fully realized tableau photographs of dogs in various contexts and situations, it is an example of what you can accomplish when you march to your own drummer.

The book is divided into two parts. The first includes four autobiographical texts that trace Albair’s background and his involvement with dogs, presented along with family snapshots and some of Albair’s staged photographs. Albair is a fine writer and his stories of childhood events come to life vividly as you read. You are transported back to post-World War II rural New Hampshire village life, where free-range children and dogs are inseparable companions. You are also treated to several memorable examples of dogs’ uncanny intelligence and unique abilities.

The second, more extensive section of the book, titled “Dogs, A Selection of Images,” includes 26 staged scenes. Albair photographs small ceramic figurines of dogs and people in various settings and situations and creates seamless fictional narratives. When you look, you do not know exactly what is happening, but something is going on, and it is up to you to decode the visual clues.

Unlike the conventional photobook practice of putting one photo on each page spread, for all but a few images Albair places a detail of the larger image on the opposite page. It is a highly unusual technique and it zooms you in and then back out, furthering your involvement with the images.

Albair also cheerfully tramples another near-sacred photobook convention, that of letting the images speak for themselves. In addition to his highly suggestive titles (“Borderline,” “Dream within a Dream,” “Sutro Heights San Francisco,” “Night Flash”), Albair comments on his own images in adjacent short texts. He tells made-up or real stories related to the images or offers general commentary on dogs and other subjects. His texts create a specific reading of the images, but in the context of the book and the ongoing narrative the effect does not seem limiting. Whatever the texts say, the images are still there in all their mystery and power, drawing the viewer in, going about their business, telling their stories, doing what they do.

Hans Hickerson, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is a photographer and photobook artist from Portland, Oregon.

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Stephen Albair – Dogs

Photographer: Stephen Albair (Born 1942, lives in San Francisco)

Language: English

Text: Stephen Albair, Ann Jastrab

Design: Christopher DeWinter, Joseph Pan

Editors: Frank Barnes, John-Michael Gariepy

Printing: Palmetto Publishing

Hardcover; perfect binding; 60 photographs; 78 pages; 8 x 10 inches; ISBN 979-8-218-47522-2

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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.