Two Weimaraners sit upright against a deep brown studio background, each crowned with cascading platinum-blonde wigs that nearly reach the floor. The symmetrical pose and frontal lighting evoke traditional portraiture, yet the ersatz hair transforms the image into deadpan comedy. What appears as a genteel society photograph reveals its artifice, exposing the thin line between dignity and parody that fascinates Wegman.

Every whisker and paw pad is rendered in the velvety granularity of Polacolor II film, allowing the dogs' personalities to persist beneath their costume. Wegman has noted that his sitters are "always in a state of becoming something"—here they oscillate between fashion model, Renaissance courtier and sitcom matriarch. The title may allude to the wholesome 1950s television family, yet the animals' aloof gaze prevents sentimentality.

The picture showcases large-format instant photography's performance aspect. Because each exposure produced an unrepeatable object, Wegman rehearsed exhaustively, choreographing posture, prop and camera angle for a single decisive frame. The print serves as both document and relic of a vanished photographic process.

Three decades later, *The Nelsons* remains contemporary. Its collision of studio polish, conceptual wit and non-human agency anticipates current debates on portraiture and identity, while the Polaroid's physicality—singular, immediate, irreproducible—reminds us of the material pleasures that underpinned pre-digital image-making.