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Sophie Gamand is a New York-based award-winning photographer and animal advocate who transforms the lives of suffering dogs that she meets at shelters throughout the United States in a completely unique (and unbelievably beautiful) way…
If you’re looking for a way to combine something that you’re really good at with helping others, then you might want to take a leaf out of Sophie Gamand’s book.
By combining her desire to help dogs – particularly Pit Bull breeds – with her love of photography, Gamand has successfully helped to rehome many dogs who were destined to be destroyed based on negative stereotypes associated with their breed; “America euthanizes upward of 1,000,000 pit bull-type dogs every year. It’s a quiet massacre. These dogs make people uncomfortable, which has led the country to be faced with a major pit bull crisis,”, she writes on her website.
Titled ” The Flower Power Series: Pit Bulls of the revolution”, her photographs help to rehome some of the saddest cases of neglect, and she regularly updates her followers about her success stories like this one below. “Unfortunately, because of their bad image, they have the false reputation of being more dangerous than other dogs, hence attracting irresponsible primary owners who are looking for a “scary dog”, and seek to develop those traits in them. Pit bulls’ downfall is to be exactly the way we created them: strong and loyal. With this series, I wonder if art is a tool powerful enough it can change pit bulls’ fate,” she says.
The photographer says she mostly photographs dogs because it teaches her to understand humans better; “dogs are the first example of artificial selection. We subdued an entire species. I believe this should give us tremendous responsibility towards dogs, and the way we treat them speaks volume about our own human society and our shortcomings,” she says.
Sophie voluntarily travels to different shelters and photographs the dogs for free and supports herself by selling portraits and calendars of the pooches she photographs, as well as offering advice and information for animal rescuers/dog adopters.
We wonder if she photographed Trump like this, would we look at him in a different light? (Probably not. She can’t save all breeds.) Take a look at our gallery above to see some of the beautiful dogs whose lives she has helped to transform and keep up to date with her campaign on Instagram here.