Portrait series: Your Pet and You
Photographs by Tobias Lang
German photographer Tobias Lang had a brilliant idea, he started photographing his friends and their pets and suddenly folks from all over the world where asking him to capture them too.
Check out his Facebook page to see. Tobias is in the process of putting together a coffee table book of his impressive collection.
Tobias Lang is a veritable newbie to the photography game. It was only in 2008 that the former IT director quit his job and started a photography apprenticeship leading to a permanent role as a full time freelance photographer in 2010.
His latest project Your Pet and You is a seemingly simple premise whereby pet owners are photographed alongside their pets on a wooden plinth. However the resulting shots, published in mainly in “charismatic” black and white hold much more depth, and are all at once sweet and quirky.
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The project began simply enough, as Lang couldn’t help noticing his roommate’s cats would constantly perch on the wooden block in his living room. He began shooting both the cats and their owners and gradually, the idea took on a life of its own and extended to more friends and family, and eventually strangers. Lang says of the project, “I love animals; they have so many characteristics and behaviors. I like to work with them, because they are not vain, they just act! Normally I like to photograph people, which is my real passion. In the project both subjects appear so all my favorites appear.”
Yes some of the shots prove that pets really can look like their owners but there is so much more to the project, and the warmth and personality lying beneath is a joy to behold. Lang puts it best himself. “I like the confidence between the pets and their owners… working out their characters, is the most sparkling thing about the series”. (Text provided by Tobias Lang)