With the advent of air-conditioning and due to most builders, “porch sitting, one of the most significant pastimes of Southern culture, has since gone the way of hand-churned ice cream and the quilting bee,” Memphian Nell Dickerson writes, and she mourns the loss. But tell that to the canines sitting pretty in Porch Dogs (John F. Blair, Publisher), Dickerson’s collection of more than 60 handsome color photos.
House dogs, yard dogs, shop dogs, swing and bench dogs, water-loving dock dogs, top dogs (who sit for their portrait from second-floor perches), and under dogs (cooling beneath the porch): These are Dickerson’s categories. No need, though, to bother Biscuit, Cleopatra, Teeny Baby, Liza Jane, and Gotcha with name-calling. They’re in hound heaven on the porches that still stand throughout the South — whether, in Dickerson’s photographs, we’re in Memphis, Mississippi, New Orleans, Alabama, or Charleston. And true to Dickerson’s abiding concern for documenting what remains of the past — see her previous book, Gone: A Photographic Plea for Preservation (from 2011) — this makes Porch Dogs a dual-purpose project. From grand doorways to humble storefronts, these are splendid examples of the South’s architectural heritage stretching back to the late 18th century.
