The Candid Frame #177 - Martine Roch

Martine Roch was in mid-life, living in Dijon, France, when she started getting serious about photography. It was 2004, and she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She dove into photography and Photoshop to take her mind off the disease. She was passionate about her new art form and learned quickly. One day, while looking at a daguerreotype of a 19th-century lady that she had scanned into Photoshop, Roch looked down at her dog, a golden Labrador Retriever named Boudi. Suddenly, something clicked in her head. “Let’s try to dress you as a lady,” she said aloud. And thus was a career born. Roch created dozens of these whimsical hybrids, then started posting them on the social-networking site Flickr. They became an immediate Internet sensation. A French publisher asked if she would license her photos for reproduction on notebooks and postcards. Soon, a German publisher came calling. Today, her notebooks and postcards are sold worldwide. People don’t give animals enough credit for being intelligent, Roch believes. “They think animals are like objects,” Roch says, “but they have feelings and emotions. They have their own way of thinking and reacting to what they see and feel.” http://martineroch-studio.com/ www.thecandidframe.com [email protected]