Elke Vogelsang
All Good Dogs—Silhouettes
Tulip
Even the Darkest Night Will End
Nice Nosing You
Harbor Reflections
The Babysitter
The Quiet Rambler
You Are Sooo Beautiful
Artist Statement
Dogs are funny characters. They find pleasure in the most mundane things.
My dogs are my joy, recreation, and constant source of laughter, though they can be shy and sad as well; they comfort me in bad times. They are members of the family, the kind I love to have around. I can never get into trouble with my dogs, because they are unpretentious and forgiving.
I would never say that I prefer dogs to humans—after all, some people mean the world to me, too; but I would definitely say that dogs enrich my life in numerous ways. My hope is that I give back to them at least half of what they give me.
As I try to explore in photography all the emotions I share with my dogs, I pay homage to them and also to life.
About the Artist
Born in 1972 in Hildesheim, Germany, Elke Vogelsang grew up in a photography- and dog-loving family.
When “Noodles,” her first dog, joined her family, Elke Vogelsang felt she needed to improve her photographic skills to do justice to the dog’s beauty and charming character. With time and patient self-teaching, she turned her passion for both dogs and picture-taking into a profession. Two more dogs have since joined her family. All three of them are not only keen models but also the stars of her images and photography archive.
On Christmas Day 2009, Elke Vogelsang’s husband suffered a brain hemorrhage. It was the dogs who found him in time to save him. He spent weeks in a coma and months with no short-term memory.
While her husband was in the hospital, Elke Vogelsang began taking a picture every day to keep a visual diary for him. Often, the dogs found themselves in front of her camera, becoming, like her photo-taking, a comfort and a distraction.
By the end of the one-picture-a-day project, which lasted two years and gave her time to think about life and what to do with it, Elke Vogelsang had found a means to reduce her stress, as well as a creative outlet. Ultimately, she decided to leave her smoothly running job as a translator to become a professional photographer.
In the time since, Elke Vogelsang’s photographs of her dogs have gained a bit of international fame, awarded with appearances on television, including the Good Morning America show, and features in publications worldwide, among them, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Huffington Post, and Global Animal Magazine. Her work also has appeared at the Website Colossal – Art & Visual Culture and has been on the covers of more than a dozen periodicals, including Bark, Dogs, DOGStoday, Dogster, Fotoforum, and Black+White Photography.
In 2016, Elke Vogelsang had a solo exhibition at the gallery Quermesse in Lisbon, Portugal. Her work also can be seen September 20-25 at Photokina 2016, a trade fair for photo and video, in Cologne, Germany.
Elke Vogelsang’s coffee-table book, Nice Nosing You, was published in 2015 in London and is available world-wide.
Elke Vogelsang Profile on 500px
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