There is something specific to how film handles the street that digital does not quite replicate. The fixed ISO, the commitment to every frame, the knowledge that you have thirty-six exposures on the roll and the light is already changing. It slows you down in the right way. You stop machine-gunning and start reading. You wait for the ears to go up, the weight to shift, the nose to point somewhere and the body to go still for a half-second before it moves again.
Film street work is a study in trust. You cannot chimp the back of the camera to see if you got it. You make your read, you make the exposure, and then you walk to the next block. The dog has already forgotten you exist. That uncertainty keeps you honest.
What drew me to dogs specifically is the way they are completely present. They are not performing for the frame the way people sometimes are. A dog will look directly into your lens for one second and mean it, and then it is gone. That directness is rare. It is the same thing I look for in the unscripted moments during a wedding day, the fifteen seconds between ceremony and portraits when nobody is managing their expression anymore, when you see who people actually are. Years of documenting Philadelphia weddings and Jersey Shore weddings sharpened that instinct. The street work puts it back in its raw form.
The project is ongoing. Boston added more frames. Cities add different light, different rhythms, different dogs with different owners who are in different amounts of a hurry. The body of work is growing. No client brief, no shot list, no timeline. Just the city and whatever it puts in front of the lens.
