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| The Photographed Cat
ISBN: 9780815652465
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Syracuse University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Photography of animals; Human-animal relationships; Cat owners; Cats; Cats;
In this combined photo archive and analysis, Arluke, a professor of sociology and anthropology at Northeastern University, and Rolfe, a collector of early 20th century animal photographs, cite a lingering ambivalence about cats, for "centuries" considered to be "witches' familiars, disease carriers, [and] pests." Consequently, cat pictures from the early 1900's are rare, despite the fact that "twenty-five million Americans had pet cats." As photography became available to amateurs, and a "craze" for "photo postcards" swept the nation, feline companions found their way into pictures. Cats were pictured with "family members," as "surrogate infants or children or mothers"; and sailors, wary of being "depicted in sentimental ways" with cats at home, posed "with their ship's cat mascots" as a way of boosting onboard morale and assuring distant family that they were happy at sea. This book is undoubtedly a work of scholarship, and as such makes well-argued points, assessing the nature of cat-human relations and cat photographs in seven thematic sections; however, the clinical approach and erudite language may prove impenetrable to the casual cat-lover. 130 duotone illus. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Arnold Arluke is professor of sociology and anthropology at Northeastern University. He is the author of numerous books on animal-human interactions including Beauty and the Beast: Human-Animal Relations Revealed in Real Photo Postcards, 1905-1935, coauthored with Robert Bogdan.
Lauren Rolfe is a collector of early twentieth-century animal photographs. |
