Neal Slavin took this picture of pugs and their owners in 2005 for an advertising campaign. The Brooklyn-born Slavin was by then a master of the group portrait. His book When Two Or More Are Gathered Together first came out in 1974 and featured bodybuilders and gravediggers, hotdog vendors and firefighters, a unique collective portrait of Americans (which he followed up with Britons a few years later).
His vocation came to him, he says, when he was looking through some family portraits and came across a picture of a scout troop. “Some were laughing, some clowning, some gazing solemnly into the camera lens, but all exuded an extraordinary humanness, a unique individuality. I wondered about each boy, about what happened after that photo was taken.”
