These photographs aren’t really about dogs. They’re really about relationships. Deep ones.

So deep a man inked his deceased dog’s likeness onto his chest. So deep another man admitted his dog feels closer at times than his wife and kids. So deep that one woman responded to my question, “What would your life be like without her?” with the stark reply, “I would have no life without her.”

As Gertrude Stein noted, it is a relationship tied to identity:
“I am I,” she wrote, “because my little dog knows me.” It is a tethered proposition; two halves, one whole, umbilically linked by the ends of a cord commonly known as a leash.

This collection of dual portraits, with one exception, was made in and around New York City’s Tompkins Square Park during 2016.