Artist Statement
As a Los Angeles pet photographer, I am continuously looking for unique ways to express our relationship with our companion animals. Dogs and cats are majestic on their own, just being who they are, but for my series Dog Noir, I imagine them with their owners in a style that looks like it could have been plucked from a 1940s classic film noir movie. By reimagining the play of shadows and light in a contemporary time, I am able to show the full diversity of Los Angeles denizens – who weren’t represented in classic crime movies except perhaps as villains or other stereotypes — and their pets. The Dog Noir series even has cats and birds.
All of the images in the series have been planned… from the wardrobe of the owners, to the locations to the lighting and the post-processing. Grain was added to the black and white images to give it a film look of an earlier era. All images were intentionally photographed with a Fujifilm X-T3 and Profoto lights for a consistent look.
The Dog Noir series began as personal work in late 2018. It has placed well in a number of international photography competitions, including the Professional Photographers of America’s International Print Competition (album), the Animal Image Makers Image Competition, Rise International Photography Awards, and Best Series in L.A. Photo Curator’s “No Happy Accidents” contest.
Gallery
About
After working as a reporter, a television producer and a website editor, Diana Lundin struck gold when she returned to photography, her first love. She began photographing her neighbors’ dogs and cats in 2013 and knew squeaking plush toys and waving pheasant feathers would be something she would be doing the rest of her life.
Her first photography book, “Dogs Vs. Ice Cream,” was published by Familius in August 2019 and she is under contract for a second book to be published in 2021. She hopes to turn the Dog Noir series into a book.
