About Smudge
I’ve always loved and accumulated old photographs, but one day about 10 years ago I looked around my house and suddenly found all those long-dead babies and brides and wearers of extraordinary hats rather depressing. They were dead, after all. And strangers, having been salvaged from bins in the backs of antiques stores and flea-market caravans for a dollar or 50 cents each.
But I noticed that the dogs — frequent subjects of those black and white images, on purpose and not — seemed somehow to remain alive. Though strangers too, they seemed familiar, even friendly. And they communicated, sometimes with humor, sometimes with sadness or wistfulness or sweetness. They always had something interesting to say, and often something about us — the humans in the pictures.
It’s easy to love dogs, and my dog Daisy in particular, so it’s not hard to guess why I’ve become so enamored of dogs in old photos. The backgrounds change, the houses, the furniture, the fashions most of all. But the dogs don’t change.
— Colleen
