Porch Dogs

Porch Dogs combines fine-art portraits of man's best friend with beautiful architectural documentation of the Southern porch.Nell Dickerson fondly recalls childhood nights on the sleeping porch of her grandparents' Mississippi Delta home the sounds of katydids, cicadas, and tree frogs, the merciful breeze from the overhead fan. But during the heat of the day, the family sought refuge indoors, leaving the dog to his lonely vigil. "I felt like he understood that the porch was the gateway between inside and outside and that it was his duty to keep sentry there in case someone wanted to pass," she recalls.Years later, Dickerson noticed that few new homes had porches, their residents increasingly dependent on air conditioning. "We Southerners used to be social," she notes. "Now, we risk losing what makes us Southern: porch sitting. But there is hope. Our dogs maintain the tradition."Dickerson weaves her passion for historic preservation first detailed in her 2011 book, Gone: A Photographic

Nell Dickerson holds degrees in anthropology, film, and architecture from, respectively, Southern Methodist University, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of New Mexico. Her photographs have appeared in juried and gallery exhibitions around the United States. She also maintains a parallel career working on feature films in animation, lighting, art direction, and set design. Nell porch-sits in Memphis, Tennessee, with her female Yorkshire terrier, Teeny Baby.