Good photography and good cinema are cousins. So a new documentary about legendary Austin photographer Dan Winters has a built-in advantage. It can weave Winters’ own striking pictures into the telling of his backstory; it can show us a master of the form arranging and taking a shot, then reveal the photo itself, braiding the moving with the still and exposing the gulf between—where the magic happens.

Part of a National Geographic series, the hour-long documentary titled “Life Is Once. Forever.” premiered earlier this month in Austin at South by Southwest (SXSW) and is available March 19 on Disney+/Hulu and March 25 on the National Geographic channel. Part biopic, part behind-the-scenes explainer, part visual candy, the documentary explores a familiar but moving theme: the luminary, beset by certain demons, consumed by his work, reckons with himself.

“Life Is Once” begins with footage of Iceland from the sky. The 61-year-old Winters, with white beard and glasses, camera on his lap, speeds along a remote road in the passenger seat of a vehicle driven by an assistant. “Photography has just been this search for magic, this search for wonder, and there’s a masterpiece everywhere,” Winters narrates. The mountainous fingers of the Westfjords peninsula jut into what must be the Denmark Strait. As the car rounds a bend, a beached ship—hulking and rusted-out—comes into view. “Oh my God,” Winters exclaims.

Even if you’ve never heard of Winters, who’s shot regularly for Texas Monthly, you may well know his work. His portraits of the likes of Michael Jordan, Barack Obama, and Angelina Jolie (covered in bees) are the sort of images you might remember even if you never check photo credit lines. Beyond celebrity portraits, Winters is known for his photojournalism and his work focusing on science and machines. 

We see Winters arranging multiple cameras to capture a rocket launch, part of documenting NASA’s Artemis program. He’s planned out each angle in advance, even hand-drawing what the photos are going to look like, a method he began deploying at a young age. Winters is possessed of “a neurodiversity,” as one commenter somewhat oddly puts it. 

“He is in another reality, kinda,” says Kathryn Winters, Dan’s wife. “Being with him, it’s like you start to realize things about the world that you would definitely not be paying attention to.”

NASA Shuttle Endeavor passes through the cloud ceiling after launching from Kennedy Space Center. Dan Winters

As Kathryn’s character is fleshed out, a less flattering aspect of Winters emerges: a Peter Pan-ishness that both burdens her with the logistical details of his life and, in earlier decades, caused him to misapprehend the core responsibility of fatherhood. “I manage a lot of things for him,” Kathryn says, understating the matter. When they met long ago, his life was one of artistic chaos and years of unfiled taxes. Today, she says, he does not even know what all medications he’s on—crucially for the treatment of bipolar disorder, a diagnosis he received in adulthood after a traumatic bike accident.

During their son Dylan’s early childhood, Winters’ career was skyrocketing. “He was not there; all he did was work,” Kathryn says. And when he was there, he often kept working in a way, constantly photographing their son in what became his longest-running project. “He became my muse,” Winters says at one point.

But children are not muses. They’re children. About halfway through, the documentary pivots on a scene of Winters and Dylan examining rows of photos of the latter arrayed on a wall. “Sometimes, it sort of felt like the priority was like I was an art project—more than a kid,” Dylan says, choking back a sob.

Kathryn helps Dan adjust his shirt for his interview. National Geographic/Gene Gallerano

Throughout the film, Winters is chasing a childhood memory of a ship. Specifically, a “massive ocean liner literally on its side on the beach … like it was this beached whale,” which he saw in California a half-century ago. Strangely, that image—which he had no camera to capture—sunk a hook in him. Something about it would not let him go.

Back in Iceland, he exits the car with his assistant. Night falls. Winters delays his shutter for a long exposure, and the assistant flashes a pale green light on the rusty beached ship. The wide-angle shot that results is a transformation, a beauty beyond the bounds of the natural eye.

Winters is a lucky man. Each time his wife considered whether her load was too heavy, she wound up recommitting to the relationship. “I just accept him the way he is,” Kathryn says. And, with time and a belated reprioritization, he’s grown extremely close with his adult son. In the scene where Dylan cries, he soon calms. “I think the main thing is it’ll just be cool to have [these photos] to show my kids,” Dylan says. And Winters, as an artist and father, responds the best he can: “Sorry it made you feel sad, Dyl’.” 

The documentary’s title is a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great French pioneer of street photography. That “Life is once, forever” captures the fragile task of picture-taking just as well as it captures the now-or-never labor of childrearing. But Winters’ family, essentially, has given him a second shot at their one shared life. 

Near the film’s end, Winters makes it to Bangladesh, where he’s going to photograph laborers at a shipyard. The situation looks a touch awkward: this big white man who can’t speak the language having these hardscrabble Bangladeshi men, all lean muscle and bones, pose for him. Through a translator, he instructs them not to smile. They hold bamboo and ropes and stand next to propellers; he calls one man “amazing” before directing him atop a pile of chains.

Yet we, the viewers, are shown the photos that he’s taking—as are the subjects, first on his camera display screen and later on prints that he hands out. The images are, of course, arresting. They’re art. Everyone sees it.

A shipyard worker holds a bamboo pole in a ship-repair yard in Bangladesh. Dan Winters

By JENNIFER PELTZ (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — French bulldogs. U.S. dog owners. C’est l’amour.

Frenchies remained the United States’ most commonly registered purebred dogs last year, according to American Kennel Club rankings released Wednesday. The club calls the Frenchie the most popular breed, though other canine constituencies may beg to differ.

Is it a coup to be celebrated? Au contraire, say longtime fans who rue what popularity is doing to the breed. Nevertheless, after lapping Labrador retrievers to take the top spot in 2022, the bat-eared, scaled-down bulldogs held on in the new standings, which reflect puppies and other dogs that were added last year to the United States’ oldest dog registry.

Meanwhile, dachshunds are at a nearly two-decade peak, the cane corso is making moves, and there’s a new breed in the mix.

Of course, purebreds are only part of the canine population in the U.S., where animal shelters faced an influx of all sorts of dogs last year. Here’s a snapshot:

After Frenchies, the most common breeds registered were Labs, golden retrievers, German shepherds and poodles. Then came dachshunds, bulldogs, beagles, Rottweilers and German shorthaired pointers.

All were also in the top 10 in 2022. A decade ago, Yorkshire terriers and boxers were in the group. Go back a half-century, and the third most popular breed was the Irish setter — now 76th.

Pooch preferences shift for reasons ranging from media exposure (social and otherwise) to changing lifestyles as more Americans have moved to cities.

The statistics have limits. Registration is voluntary, the AKC releases few raw numbers, and the popularity rankings measure only the club’s roughly 200 recognized breeds. They don’t include doodles, other deliberate hybrids or everyday mixed-breed dogs, though those can be registered as “all-American dogs” for such sports as agility and obedience.

Nearly 98,500 French bulldogs joined the AKC pack last year, after a whopping 108,000 in 2022.

The small, solidly built, push-faced dogs have a penchant for comically pensive expressions and often take city living in stride. “They’re interesting little beings,” says Naneice Bucci, who has owned and shown them for decades.

The breed is now are a lightning rod for canine controversy and cultural critique.

There are the foreshortened snouts that can result in labored breathing, gagging, difficulty with exercise and other ills — concerns that prompted the Netherlands to ban breeding certain individual dogs with muzzles deemed too short. There are pet-store heists and violent robberies, at least one of them deadly. There’s a proliferation of Frenchies with unusual coat colors and textures, which have Frenchie folk squabbling over longtime standards.

And there’s concern among long-timers that the hot market for puppies is incentivizing people who are in it for greed, not the breed.

To Bucci, “it’s a very scary time.”

As a “preservation breeder” who follows AKC standards and conducts a battery of internationally recommended health tests before her dogs reproduce, she dreads that breeders who don’t do likewise may lead to crackdowns on everyone. And as a founder of Nevada French Bulldog Rescue, she also sees “all of the underbelly of the people who breed indiscriminately.”

“Every time we take in a Frenchie that’s in terrible condition, yes, I get angry,” says Bucci, who lives near Reno. “But at the same time, I don’t want to be punished for trying to do it right.”

Among other breeds, the unmistakable, low-slung dachshund is riding high at No. 6, its highest ranking since 2004. The dogs ranked as high as third at times in the 1950s-70s.

Their combination of sprightly cuteness, small size and determination — they were originally bred to roust badgers — endear them to many. They also have a full-sized bark and a tendency toward stubbornness.

“Even though they’re small, people have to remember: They are hounds,” says Carole Krivanich of Milton, Delaware, whose nearly 15-year-old dachshund Mo is an agility and show champion. A longtime Rottweiler owner, she’s found dachshunds to be “very versatile” and good companions.

The cane corso (pronounced CAH’-neh COOR’-soh) is now 16th in the rankings, remarkable for a breed the AKC first started counting as recently as 2010. (Perhaps it helped that owners have included such figures as NBA great LeBron James and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.)

The dogs are praised as protective, trainable and attached to their people. But the strong breed is “not for somebody that doesn’t know how to control a dog,” AKC spokesperson Brandi Hunter Munden says.

The bracco Italiano debuts in the standings at 152nd most popular. But the large, long-eared bird-hunters aren’t exactly obscure. Country music power couple Tim McGraw and Faith Hill have shared the antics of their bracchi Italiani (that’s the proper plural) on social media. A bracco co-owned by McGraw notched a first-round “best of breed” win at the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club dog show last year.

The sloughi was rarest among last year’s registrations. Sometimes called Arabian greyhounds, the fleet, somewhat shy dogs joined the AKC pack in 2016.

While dogs from affenpinschers to Xoloitzcuintlis were bred last year, U.S. animal shelters were already brimming with dogs and cats. Shelters and rescue groups took in about 3.2 million dogs, while 2.2 million dogs were adopted, according to Shelter Animals Count, a nonprofit that gathers shelter data.

There’s “a need for a renewed effort to make adoption a priority for the community,” says the group’s executive director, Stephanie Filer. Shelters have a wide variety of dogs to offer, including specific breeds, she notes.

Hunter Munden, the AKC’s spokesperson, has two rescue dogs and a purebred herself.

“Rescue is wonderful,” she said. “However, we do understand that people want specific characteristics to fit their lifestyle, when it comes to dog ownership, and that’s where purebred dogs come in.”