MANHATTAN — When Mark Ross took up his post as volunteer photographer at the city's Animal Care & Control shelter on 110th Street, his task was to take pictures aimed at tempting people to adopt.
But it was the pets deemed too sick to live that caught his eye.
He took to Facebook and began posting pictures of the cats and dogs put on the daily euthanasia list, describing them the night before they were slated to die in a last-ditch effort to find someone willing to save them.
His work is now about to feature in a glossy coffee table book.
"Animal Shelter Portraits," showcasing 76 images culled from more than 2,500 images Ross snapped in nearly two years at the 326 E. 110th St. facility, is expected to hit shelves on Mar. 27.
"It occurred to me that I could do more if I could get these photos up on Facebook. The whole world would see them," said Ross, an Upper East Side resident with six cats and more than 2,200 Facebook friends.
"When you go to the shelter, it's shocking. You’ve never seen anything like it,” Ross said.
"You see the sadness and the troubled animals. They're hurt, suffering and frightened and because of that they're condemned to death," he said. "They're sweet as hell and you wish you could take them home. That’s hard for every volunteer to deal with."
The book, which will donate a percentage of its proceeds to the No Kill Advocacy Center, is not all doom and gloom.
"It depicts the sadness and loneliness of the animals," Ross said. "It also shows them as tender, sweet, funny and joyful because that was the selling point."
The pictures, after all, were trying to get these animals into new homes.
Ross said the publication wasn't popular with Animal Care & Control, which he said asked him not to use some images. The nonprofit group that handles animal control services for New York City was successful in having its name removed from the book.
"They don’t want any press," Ross said of the shelter group. "And here I am putting out a book. They know I have something to say and I am disgruntled, so they contacted my editor."
According to the Mayor's Alliance for NYC Animals, euthanasia of cats and dogs in city shelters fell below 12,000 for the first time in 2010.
But Ross and other animal advocates say the city’s three animal shelters are too small for the number of animals coming in and that budget constraints make caring for them properly impossible.
"They need to kill because there’s a lot more animals coming in tomorrow," he said.
AC&C did not immediately respond for comment.
Ross was the first to post Facebook pictures of the animals on the euthanasia list, spawning other sites to follow, including Urgent, which was shut down and later replaced by Urgent Part 2, and Pets on Death Row.
He stopped photographing the animals in 2010 when he refused to sign a waiver after the shelter changed its rules on photography. The other sites, however, continue to operate, getting the euthanasia list leaked to them every day.
"Nobody knows who is doing it," Ross said, "but thank God it was done and still is."
Marina Guvenc, an animal activist who has rescued several cats from Manhattan and lives in Westchester, was inspired to start saving kitties after seeing Ross’s Facebook site. In the summer of 2010, she saw his photo of a cat named King who had been shot three times in the rear with a BB gun.
"The photo showed his eyes pleading for help," Guvenc said. "I knew that this cat may very likely end up dead. And the eyes went right through my soul.
"That was my first foster."
That cat is now called Logan and was adopted by Guvenc’s mother.
"Ross's book shows that the cats and dogs who are killed day after day in New York City are not just faceless statistics," said Guvenc.
"It's important for people to see with their own eyes the animals that are discarded by the city in their rush to complete their 'animal control.'"
