A canine hall of fame has opened in Paris, exhibiting giant portraits of the dogs of the great and good of French political, business and social life. ‘Leur Chien’ (their dog) takes a light hearted look at what the pooches of France’s social elite might say about their owners. Valery Giscard d’Estaing, a former president who has two hunting dogs in the show, was among the celebrities who attended the exhibition’s official opening last Wednesday along with a dozen live mutts. “The idea was to do a portrait gallery from the point of view of dogs,” said Claude Anthenaise, the curator of the Musee de la Chasse in the historic Le Marais district that is hosting the show. “It reverses the traditional relationship between master and dog. We feel like prey in the gallery,” he added.
Wandering around the gallery is a slightly unnerving experience, with the giant faces of 68 dogs, one domesticated wolf and a lone cat staring out at the visitor. Antoine Schneck, who spent three years photographing the dogs, presents only their heads against a black backdrop in a square metre frame. “The most difficult dog was Alphonse, belonging to Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, because he just wouldn’t sit still when Schneck went to take his picture in a country house in
Normandy,” the photographer said.
The current French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, declined to have his labrador Clara photographed, and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy also said no to a picture of her Chihuahua Dumbledore. And erstwhile president Jacques Chirac, who gave away his Maltese terrier Sumo after it kept attacking him, declined to take part because he did not want to be associated with the museum, which is dedicated to hunting. Many of the dogs belong to politicians or business people, but France’s actors were also represented, with mutts belonging to cinema stars Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil on the show
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