Funny Dogs

by J.C. Suares (Editor), Jane Martin (Text)

Welcome Enterprises published J.C. Suares' Funny Cats and Funny Dogs in 1995. These hilarious collections of photographs, anecdotes and zany illustrations were instant best-sellers and demanded repeat performances. Now there are six little gems in this series and greeting cards to boot! Here are our canine and feline friends at their very best -- funny, loving, oh-so-cool, or simply fat -- as portrayed by such renowned photographers as Mary Ellen Mark and Robin Schwartz and writers including Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain. These titles are delightful and irresistible -- over 475,000 copies in print in three languages proves it!

Genres: Dogs, Animals, Photography, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published May 31, 1995

About the author

Jean-Claude Suàres (March 30, 1942 – July 30, 2013) was an artist, illustrator, editor, and creative consultant to many publications, and the first Op-Ed page art director at The New York Times.

More information: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Hákon Gunnarsson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite dog photography books, even though the title is terribly wrong. Most of the photos aren't that funny. There are even shots like Richard Kalvar's shot on pages 30-31 of a sitting dog. To me that photo isn't funny, but has the air of melancholy. Or Archie Lieberman's shot on page 66 depicting golden retriever and bird, which is beautiful, but not funny. The thing is vast majority of the photographs in this collection are good, and some of them are really funny like John Drysdale's photo on page 43 of a bulldog and squirrel interacting.

Some, not all, the photos have the behind the shot story, which often adds another dimension to them, like that Drysdale shot for example. The story is that the bulldog acted as the surrogate mother to this and two other squirrels. In this shot the bulldog looks very mean at the little critter, but she was actually a very good mom to it. Looks can sometimes be deceiving.

There is one photo from 1890, one from 1898, but most of them are from the 1970s to the 1990s, but all are black and white, which gives the work a consistent look through out. Drysdale has five photos, Elliot Erwitt and Joyce Ravid have three each, other have one or two. Oddly enough there is one photo that doesn't make it into the credit list, a shot by Priscilla Ratazzi which is on the dust jacket. I would have liked to get the backstory to this shot, but unfortunately it seems to have been forgotten.

There are some famous quotes about dogs through out the book, and the occasional cartoon, but even though they are nice, or funny, they don't really add much to this collection. All in all I think this is an very good dog photography book, which I would give four and a half stars to if goodreads would allow it, but lets just call it five stars.

[Christyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny Dogs wasn't quite as funny as I hoped it would be. It had a few genuinely funny pictures but I'd say at least 1/2 were just okay (I wasn't quite sure how some of them were funny). The pictures were all black and white, the vast majority being at least full-page. They were accompanied by the photographer's name, title (of the picture if applicable), place and year followed by a brief caption about the picture. Some pages had dog quotes (and a dog cartoon) - honestly I didn't really get some of the quotes (especially as they related to the picture they were accompanying).

Overall it was an okay book to look through, but not really all that laugh-out-loud-gut-busting-hilarity that I was hoping for. 3 stars.