Home / Animals

Photographer Takes Beautiful Portraits of Shelter Dogs to Find Them Homes

By Alice Yoo on October 25, 2013

As we've seen before with Traer Scott's Shelter Dogs series, a growing number of photographers have been taking photos of unwanted dogs to bring light to the issue of pet overpopulation and to do their part in helping shelter dogs find loving homes. Late last year, professor and photographer Shannon Johnstone started her own ongoing series called Landfill Dogs where each week for 18 months she brings one dog from the Wake County Animal Center in Raleigh, North Carolina to the local landfill to photograph them.

Johnstone chose a landfill site as her backdrop to show where the dogs would end up if they didn't find homes and because it offers an interesting metaphor of hope. As she states, ” It is a place of trash that has been transformed into a place of beauty. I hope the viewer also sees the beauty in these homeless, unloved creatures.”

“These are not just cute pictures of dogs,” Johnstone says. “My goal is to offer an individual face to the souls that are lost because of animal overpopulation, and give these animals one last chance.”

On the Landfill Dogs Facebook page, Johnstone divides up her photos into three albums – Never Found a Home, Landfill Dogs Who are Still Looking for Homes, and Landfill Dogs Who Have Recently Found Homes. Here are some of the most beautiful photos from each of the albums.

All captions are from date of publishing.

Above: Rose (Found a Home)

UPDATE: We're very happy to announce that Shannon's Landfill Dogs series is one of 25 photo stories featured in our new book For Love, published by Chronicle Books! The book is currently available to order at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Indie Bound.

Pigpen (Never Found a Home)