Becky the Dog Steals the Spotlight: Best Photo by John Dean | Photography

TIt was taken 50 years ago by a 20 year old. I was away from Baltimore for the first time, attending art school while still living at home. My professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and his friend, who teaches at Nottingham Trent University, decided to create an exchange program. So I spent one spring semester in Nottingham without taking any classes: it was just photography and on my own, which was kind of new.

I stayed with a young family, living on the third floor of their Victorian house. They had a baby boy who turned one when I was there. I have pictures of Christmas. I was really integrated, as they say today, into this family. We had dinner together. I remember we made marmalade using the seeds to get the pectin.

I went out every day, either to the nursery [Nottingham’s oldest public park] Or just to walk around town or look at all the demolition that was happening. It was a time of change and the Victorian buildings were demolished to make way for newer council housing. It was no different from Baltimore. Both are working class cities. Baltimore had the steel industry, and Nottingham had bicycle, lace, and other factories.

But the industries that made these cities were dwindling. It hadn’t hit us hard yet in Baltimore — Bethlehem Steel closed its doors years later — but there was a decline. What struck me about Nottingham was the complete destruction of the buildings. Local children made these demolition sites their playgrounds. There was no supervision: they would climb through windows, enter empty buildings and explore. They were lucky they didn’t fall through a broken window or something.

I regularly saw Joe, the man in this photo, walking through the greenhouse. That park was a magical place for me. The day I took this photo was probably the first time I met him. I have other shots of him that aren’t as captivating, because it’s the dog that really makes this photo. The dog’s name was Becky and the little girl was his granddaughter. I never learned her name because she wasn’t with him all the time, but Joe and Becky were regulars. Become a man to talk to. We loved talking about music.

I’ve been lucky to be a tourist: you look at everything through eyes that make it seem new and modern. To me, this picture now seems very English. I really had no idea what England would be like before I arrived, when I was basing my knowledge on things like Roger Miller’s song England Swings: “England swings like a pendulum / Bobby on the bikes, two by two / Westminster Abbey, the Tower, and Big Ben / The rosy red cheeks of little children.”

The fact that in Nottingham I was able to approach people and chat to them, so to speak, and have something in common, and then ask them to take a photo, that was a skill I developed that served me well. When you are alone somewhere, you become a magnet for strangers to come and talk to you, and vice versa. In Istanbul, I got up from the minaret of the Blue Mosque because I had spent some time with a carpet merchant whose cousin was the imam there. “Oh, I can lift you up, no problem,” he said. Serendipity has played a huge role in my career.

Biography of John Dean

child: New York City, 1955
High point: My first assignment was at the Walters Art Museum in the 1980s, where I traveled to Istanbul to photograph the Hagia Sophia.
Top tip: Don’t take your “vision” for granted. There is something unique about your point of view. Work on what satisfies your creativity and share it.