Jill Medinger[portfolio_slideshow id=6986]
Size doesn’t matter in these photographs by Russian photographer Andy Seliverstoff.
Originally published in EQLiving April 2017 and updated June 2021.
But the dogs in Little Kids and Their Big Dogs are beautiful on the inside, too, as evidenced by their interactions with children who are just a fraction of their enormous size. “The main goal of my photo shoots wasn’t just to create beautiful pictures, but to capture the interaction between the children and the animals,” says Seliverstoff, 58, who never anticipated the impact his photographs would have.
His photo site gets an average half-million visits per day, and his Instagram followers have surged to more than 40,000.“This state of endless joy and mutual confidence,”he adds, “has become the central idea of the book”.
Seliverstoff says Little Kids and Their Big Dogs started off as a fluke. “When good friends asked me to photograph their 2-year-old daughter, they showed up at the park with their Great Dane in tow,” he explains. “I was blown away by the relationship between little Alice and gigantic Sean, so I decided to incorporate him into the shoot.”When Seliverstoff posted those and similar photos on Facebook, they immediately went viral, and his project was born.
When Seliverstoff posted those and similar photos on Facebook, they immediately went viral, and his project was born. Little Kids and Their Big Dogs features some familiar dogs, such as the Great Dane, Newfoundland, and Saint Bernard. It also contains photographs of rare breeds as well, including the Komondor, a Hungarian herding dog whose dreadlocked fur resembles a mop; the bracco Italiano, a versatile hunting dog that is little-known outside its native Italy; and the Moscow watchdog, a guardian breed developed around Russia’s capital city from Saint Bernard crosses. Other breeds featured are the Alaskan Malamute, black Russian terrier, Briard, dogue de Bordeaux, great Pyrenees, Irish wolfhound, Leonberger, Rhodesian ridgeback, and Tibetan mastiff.
Since this story was published in Equestrian Living in 2017, Seliverstoff has published Volume 2, and Volume 3 of Kids and Dogs. “In the end, I hope the book conveys this important message: Love for dogs and children makes people kinder,” Seliverstoff says.
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