Do you think that artists, who sometimes work in solitude and often need unconditional love, have a special affinity for the companionship of dogs?

I found myself asking that question last summer, when, to mark the dog days of August, the Smithsonian Archives of American Art put together a collection of historical photos of artists and their dogs. (Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who carved four presidents into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, owned four Great Danes, by the way; Jackson Pollock had two dogs to keep him company in his studio—a border collie mix named Gyp and a standard poodle called Ahab.)

Now, nine months later—a few years in dog time—I’m thinking about photographers and dogs in particular.

Judging from a number of stories we’ve been following recently at Pro Photo Daily, photographers have a uniquely rewarding relationship with dogs, in which both species stand a chance to benefit. The stories may not point to a creative trend of any kind—people have been documenting Canis lupus familiaris for a long time—but they do hint at the unfathomable connection between man and beast, when man is an artist and the beast is his muse.

I once interviewed photographer William Wegman about his relationship with dogs—both professional and personal—and he told me a story about Fay Wray, the cinnamon-colored weimaraner who made her artistic debut in a photograph called "Roller Rover." After adopting her from a breeder in Memphis, Wegman brought her home to his New York studio, where she seemed unnerved by the noise of the big city. It was six months later, Wegman told me, when she let him know she was ready to go to work as his model. As he put it, “She said, ‘I didn’t come all the way from Tennessee to New York to lie around in your studio.'”

I asked Wegman how, exactly, the dog had explained this. By wagging her tail? No, he said: He simply “listened” to her, and she would “say” what she was thinking. He added that he does not consider himself a dog whisperer, or one of those people “who are so doggy, everything they do is a dog thing,” though he does sleep with his dogs. In any case, Fay Wray's career in front of the camera was launched.

                                    "Roller Rover" by William Wegman

The immense popularity of Wegman’s dog photos anticipated the craze for animal imagery we see today on BuzzFeed. Or perhaps a better artistic antecedent would be cartoonist Charles Schulz, creator of “Peanuts” and an iconic beagle named Snoopy, who knew that “happiness is a warm puppy.” Photographers today also understand this and are working hard to fill our lonely hearts with the kind of cute that heals.

Michigan-based photographer Rebecca Leimbach, for instance, scored a hit recently with her series “Harp & Lola,” which shows her dog and daughter growing up together in transcendent kinship. Meanwhile, New Yorker Jessica Shybaadded some 300,000 followers to her Instagram feed with her photos of son Theo and puppy Beau, who nap side by side every day.

                        Theo and Beau, by Jessica Shyba

Perhaps no one is more acutely aware of the power of the dog to captivate modern culture than Los Angeles-based photographer Lara Jo Regan, who turned a little ball of fur she picked up along a roadside near Bakersfield into a panting piece of found art called Mr. Winkle. Regan’s Mr. Winkle books became so popular that the dog once did a cameo on Sex and the City. Now Regan is deconstructing dogs again, with a 2014 calendar titled simply “Dogs In Cars,” which features her photos of dogs having their best day ever.

                              From "Dogs in Cars," by Lara Jo Regan

Like Regan’s air-cooled canines, the dogs that photographer Seth Casteelphotographed jumping into swimming pools in 2012 seem to be having a wonderful time, which is something humans like to see. Casteel’s “Underwater Dogs” series, a viral hit that became a book, captures the unadulterated joy that dogs take in whatever it is they’re doing. Casteel’s photos show us that when it comes to fun, dogs go all in.

                 From "Underwater Dogs," by Seth Casteel

By comparison, humans often (though not in all cases) take a more tentative approach to fun, food, and sex. I think we admire dogs for their wholehearted approach to life. At the same time, photographs of dogs like those by Casteel reveal a nature we can’t really comprehend—an alien being that becomes apparent only under the emotionless gaze of the camera. Back in 2011, photographer Carli Davidson exposed this surreal corner of the dog soul in her series “SHAKE,” which captures dogs drying themselves in ardent dog fashion. More recently, she released a slow-motion video version of “SHAKE.”

Of all the recent man-photographs-dog stories we’ve covered, the most poignant are those about photographers who use their skills to help shelter animals. Shannon Johnstrone,for instance, takes dogs that are due to be euthanized to a local landfill, where she photographs them frolicking. The images are used to help the dogs find homes; the landfill backdrop serves as a reminder of their alternative fate, because many will end up buried there.

About a year ago, Seth Casteel teamed up with GreaterGood.org to create beauty shots of shelter dogs in need of adoption. Similarly, Massachusetts-based photographer Fred Levy started the “Black Dogs Project,”a portrait series featuring black shelter dogs shot elegantly against a black background, because he learned black dogs are adopted less frequently. Meanwhile, photo retoucher Sarolta Bánlaunched a project to increase the visibility of shelter dogs with a series of fantastical images. Here, homeless hounds live in a world better than the real one.

             From Sarolta Bán's "Help Dogs With Images" project

In recent weeks we’ve come across stories about photographers who document lonely dogs and dogs who tongue-kisshumans, and one about a photographer who explores the exploitation of dogs and women in a series of dog-woman diptychs. It all leads one to wonder, whose best friend is who?

I recently put that question to Landon Nordeman,who for the past several years has been documenting the various species (and breeds) that attend dog shows around the world, including the Westminster Dog Show. Nordeman, who started the work as an assignment for the New Yorker, told me that shooting dogs and their owners allows him to create images “with all the elements I look for in a good photograph: color, shape, gesture, surprise, and humor.” The takeaway: Dogs are inherently photogenic.

                        From Landon Nordeman's "Canine Kingdom" series

They're also inherently funny. But why? Elliott Erwitt, who can find humor in almost every subject, has often captured an abiding humanity in dogs. Likewise, in William Wegman's conceptual images, dogs stand in as laughable versions of ourselves. The joke is on us, of course, not the weimaraners, and they most likely don't get it anyway, but who knows what's really going on in a dog's head? As Wegman put it, “When they’re licking up pizza that someone has run over with a car, you realize there is something different between you and them.”

With dogs, in other words, there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that in 2002. He was actually talking about the dogs of war, which he let slip in Irag a year later, but he may as well have been talking about dogs in general. In any case, as Errol Morris shows in his new documentary about Rumsfeld, it's hard to know what was really going on in his head, too.

“Dogs, I think, have an unpredictable spontaneity that we respond to,” said Landon Nordeman, whose objectivity can be trusted, because does not own a dog.

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