Cycle Hiroshima City

Peace Memorial Museum. Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture. Japan

President Lyndon B. Johnson of the United States

Country cavalcade: Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson of the United States in northern Finland, 1957

Bear and bare: President Urho Kekkonen inspects the guard of honour on a visit to Great Britain, 1961

Russian dogs by Pentti Sammallahti

Russian dogs by Pentti Sammallahti (Solovki, White Sea, 1992)

How does he do it? The dogs pose in Pentti Sammallahti’s photographs like professional models who know how to keep still.

Sammallahti admits sausages and sardines sometimes help communication.

In 1998, in the old, printed version of Books from Finland, we published a selection of Sammallahti’s photographs, together with some written impressions by the British photographer and essayist John Berger. According to him, people who first see the selection of Sammallahti photographs he has, ‘usually gasp at first, and then peer closer, smiling,’ as they seem to remember something they knew as children, but which they have forgotten how to see – from the times ‘we talked to the dogs, listened to their secret and kept it to ourselves.’

A Helsinki dog by Pentti Sammallahti (1882)

Sammallahti (born 1950) is one of the pioneers of the Finnish photographic art and fine art printing, which he has also taught at the University of Industrial Arts and Design in Helsinki.

Specialising in black-and-white photography of people and their environment, Sammallahti has travelled extensively throughout Russia and Siberia, France and Finland.

President Woodrow Wilson-Pierce-Arrow limousine

President Woodrow Wilson used to love to ride in his 1919 Pierce-Arrow limousine, which awaited his return from the Treaty of Versailles ceremonies in Paris that ended World War I. His friends later bought the car for him. (Carol M. Highsmith)

Salvadoran President Tony Saca

Salvadoran President Tony Saca, right, and Salvadoran Defense Minister General Otto Romero review the troops at the military school in Antiguo Cuscatlan, El Salvador during celebrations for Day of the Soldier, Sunday, May 7, 2006. (AP PHOTO/Edgar ROMERO)

Jets45 Shows a Martin P4M-1

This undated black and white photo provided by Jets45 shows a Martin P4M-1 "Mercator" in flight. A Martin P4M-1Q Mercator, carrying Lt. James B. Deane, Jr., and 15 other men, was shot down over the East China Sea shortly after midnight Aug. 23, 1956. The remains of four crew members were recovered, but the status of the other 12, including Deane, was never determined. (AP Photo/Jets45)

French President Jacques Chirac

French President Jacques Chirac stands in the command car during Victory Day ceremonies in Paris, Monday May 8, 2006. Military official at right is unidentified. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)