Paws to Heart
I was sitting at the park and saw many dogs happily walking with their owners. Dogs seem to really love, trust, and stay loyal to their human friends. By watching those best friends together, I wanted to do more research about dogs and human relationships. I went through several digitized collections such as the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, the British Newspaper Archive, and more digital resources to collect images and text.
Editorial
I found a lot of great archive images from the 1900s to the 1990s. There are family portraits with dogs, and some natural snapshots of humans and dogs together. By just looking at those pictures, I could feel the energy of the cute and funny moments created with dogs over time. Also, it was interesting to see that it was difficult to guess the year of a photograph by looking at the dogs, but by looking at people’s clothes and styles I could tell that the images came from different years and decades.
From these images and the real-life experience I had at the park, I realized that humans and dogs have influenced each other in many great ways for a long time and still do today. The main text of the book, which I found from The Guardian, “Who’s a good boy? The unbreakable bond between humans and dogs,” shows this deep relationship between humans and dogs and how it has lasted over time.
This research led me to create a 20-page book that contains archival photographs and selected text to show the long-lasting and heartwarming bond between humans and dogs. I made the book pocket-sized (2.75 × 4.25 inches) to symbolize the constant presence of this relationship, and I bound it with a thin but strong brown string to represent how strong the connection is, even if it might look simple on the surface.