My dear, sweet Long Hair Dachshund Napoleon, "Nappi"
Napoleon Index | Dogs Index | Pets Index
I met my girlfriend, Gisela Mach, in the same Kurfuerstendamm apartment
where I lived for my first 3/4 year in Berlin. When she took me out
to the edges of West Berlin, where she grew up, we visited a friend
of hers, whose pure-bred Long Hair Dachshund had just had puppies. On the spur of the moment we decided to buy one of the dogs. One was
quiet, shy, and looked unbelievably sad. So, of course, we fell in
love with him, took him, and I decided to call him Napoleon.
I have never again met so sweet a creature. He lived with both of us
through the Kurfuerstendamm apartment times and when we took another
apartment together. Then, when I became a photographer, Gisela found
me a great studio in a building built by a sculpturer for
sculpturers, in which two friends of hers lived in the upstairs attic
apartment, and she took a condominium near the city center. Gisela
kept Nappi, but I had a key and often took him with me while she was
at work, and we had dinner together with him at Gisela's place many
times a week. When I had to leave Berlin in '68, leaving him was the
most difficult thing of the move.
He was magnificently unmagnificent. Just a really sweet, shy, loving
presence.
Even though it is a fast, very grainy film, the eye stands out in the
photo as the focused point/plane of the image, with its greater
plasticity (effect of three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional
surface).
©2006 Mark Anstendig. All rights reserved.
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