Famed Fashion Photographer’s Glamour Shots Help Puppies Get Adopted

One New York-based photographer is really taking the phrase, “Make sure to get my best side,” to tear-jerking new heights.

Richard Phibbs’ work has been featured in dozens of ad campaigns, including Giorgio Armani and Ralph Lauren, and numerous magazines like Vanity Fair, Entertainment Weekly, and Condé Nast Traveller, but his work with the Humane Society of New York is highlighting a different kind of beauty and it’s helping dogs get adopted.

“My job requires me to travel a lot around the world and I’m overwhelmed by the amount of suffering that I see to animals around the world,” Phibbs told ABC News. “It makes me feel heavy-hearted, so as opposed to doing nothing, I found that volunteering my services to The Humane Society is a way that I could help.”

Phibbs’ pup portraits have now been collected in a new book, Rescue Me from Aperture, which highlights many of the dogs and their heartbreaking-to-heartwarming stories of abandonment to finding loving forever homes.

“My portraits of homeless animals are not meant to make people feel sad,” Phibbs says in the book’s introduction. He continues:

“The goal is to find every animal a home. I hope to inspire people who are thinking of getting a dog or cat to ‘adopt instead of buy.’ By sharing your home and your life with a homeless animal, you become part of this great awakening, this transformation of human consciousness that recognizes the essential value of all living beings.”

Phibbs has photographed over 360 dogs since starting work with the Humane Society in 2012, according to ABC News. Sandra DeFeo, the executive director of The Humane Society of New York, credited Phibbs “level of trust” to ABC News for his ability to capture such sweet images of each dog. DeFeo said:

“He goes in the room and he relates to the dog like he would a person that he’s photographing. He gets a feel for them so he can make a really good portrait of them … I really feel like he sees each dog’s soul, and each of the dog’s expressions is unique because it’s an expression of their soul.”

DeFeo said that when Phibbs’ portraits are shared on the group’s Facebook page, more often than not the animal is adopted.

Some proceeds from Rescue Me, which features 63 of those dogs that have been adopted, will go to benefit the Humane Society to help other dogs get adopted.

Take a look at some of the pictures below and share this story to help spread the word to highlight the benefits of dog adoption.