Posted: May 14, 2008, 5 a.m. EDT
Mellon Tytell has photographed dozens of famous people, including the Dalai Lama, Norman Mailer, James Taylor, and rocker Patti Smith. But it’s the professional photographer’s adopted mixed breed, Hunter — named for writer Hunter S. Thompson — who remains her favorite subject.
“To me, Hunter was more fascinating than a Pollock or a Picasso,” Tytell writes in “My Lucky Dog,” which the New York Post calls “a poem in pictures” about the dog.
Tytell lives in a small cabin in Vermont, where many of the book’s photos were taken. She moved to the single-story cabin in 1999 when arthritis made it difficult for Hunter to climb the stairs to the pair’s Greenwich Village, N.Y., apartment. Though Tytell left behind a thriving career and social life, she says she would do it again.
“As a photographer, I traveled around the world, picking up and leaving on a dime,” Tytell writes. “Hunter tamed me. I couldn’t be away from him for more than five hours at a time. I had no children of my own; Hunter taught me about responsibility, love, and devotion in a way that was inaccessible to me with people.”
“My Lucky Dog” is in bookstores now.