Monday, May 18, 2009

The Republican Article!

I was featured in the Repulican paper today. It made the front page! Here is the article which I found online:

Photographer uses skills to save animals

Monday, May 18, 2009
By DIANE LEDERMAN
dlederman@repub.com

AMHERST - Mary, an 8-month-old pit bull terrier, skitters across a photographer's background paper to chase a ball while clutching a stuffed toy in her mouth.

Rachel E. Yessenow laughs as she shoots picture after picture, looking for the right image to show just how lovely this dog is.

Yessenow is a senior at the University of Massachusetts, and the shoot is part of her senior thesis and show called "Four to Five Million." But, it is more than just an exhibit or class requirement. Four to 5 million is the number of animals euthanized in animal shelters each year. Her show is a way to help these dogs and others find a home.

Images of some of the dogs that she photographed will be displayed at the Student Union Art Gallery at UMass from May 18-22. Others will be posted on her Web site with adoption information.

She has spent months on the project, but her love of animals is lifelong. Her father, a veterinarian, encouraged people to adopt dogs from shelters instead of buying them, and her house was filled with pets in need of homes.

The 22-year-old Connecticut native had worked on a photography project in which she looked at the relationship between people and their pets. "I'm interested in how humans react with animals," she said.

She uses volunteer models to pose with the animals and shelters and rescue groups to provide the dogs, including the Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center in Springfield, where she photographed Mary recently.

In the photo on her show invitation, she has a model lying down, looking at a dog that is also lying down but looking away from the model. The dog has one ear up and one down.

Yessenow said that the dog, large and mostly black, is hard to place because of "dog racism in shelters - big black dog syndrome." People tend to be afraid of the dogs, in part because their faces are hard to see, she said.

And the same fear is applied to pit bulls, she said, because of the stereotypes that the dogs are vicious.

Mary, who was wagging her tail as she tried to pull the toy away from model Ethan S.D. Siegel during the photo session, was anything but vicious. Siegel, a UMass student, was having fun with the dog. Mary is more like the pit bulls Yessenow knows.

Yessenow spends several hours at each shoot and has traveled all over the region to take pictures.

Her photography teacher Susan Jahoda in an e-mail wrote that "Rachel's project is a really heartfelt attempt at using her studio practice as a photographer to facilitate an important cause.

"She is trying to create an awareness of the numbers of abandoned dogs, the conditions of their abandonment and the fact that people are encouraged, through the media, to 'buy' a thoroughbred puppy, instead of adopting an animal in need.

Said Barbara L. Hays, executive director of the O'Connor Center, "She does an amazing job of really capturing the spirit of the animals."

"She makes pit bulls cute and adorable. She really brings out the dog's personality and takes away the stigma."

Plus from her writing on her blog, Hays said, "she has some really incredible information."

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