From Time Magazine -ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER:

“David Harry Stewart is known more for his portraits of people, rather than animals. “I’m not a wildlife guy,” says Stewart. But unbeknownst to photo director Kira Pollack, who assigned the project to Stewart, the photographer is familiar with rescue dogs, having fostered two. A pit bull, Ed– who came to him from a shelter in Boston 10 years ago– had the uncanny ability to chase squirrels 15 feet up into a tree, leaving Stewart to climb up and pull him down. He rescued his Akita, Bear, himself, finding him in an abandoned lot on New York’s Lower East Side. Bear, who had been a drug dealer’s guard dog, was much harder to train then the happy-go-lucky Ed, since Bear had been programmed to attack humans. “It was as if I’d taken a tiger into my apartment,” says Stewart. After getting some help from a psychiatrist, who formerly practiced at Bellevue, on how to cue the dog, and two years hard work (and a shredded apartment), Stewart was able to place Bear with a family in upstate New York.

With the Missouri Humane Society worried about security, getting to the St. Louis pound site involved some subterfuge. Stewart met Humane Society members at an appointed place, and then was led to the warehouse where the dogs were housed. Stewart fell in love with the St. Louis rescue dogs. To get them comfortable with the project he would first sit down and embrace the dogs, putting himself face to face with each terrier. “Dogs greet each other nose to nose,” says Stewart, “so that’s how I greeted them.” Every night he’d return to his hotel room covered in fur, slobber and dog pee, “but I was having the best time.”

All the photos were taken onsite at the kennel, a very noisy place, in part, because having shredded heavy plastic Kong toys and 2×4 planks, the pit bulls were given bowling balls, an unbreakable toy, to play with. “So there was the constant thunk thunk,” says Stewart, “as they rolled them around their pens.”

He wanted to bring one dog, Truman, home, but the idea was vetoed by his wife. So Stewart contents himself with his Chihuahua who is small enough to travel with him on assignment.”