Photographer Celebrates Her Adopted Dog

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.