The Photographed Cat presents readers with an examination of how human-cat relationships are depicted in early twentieth-century photography. Examining this relationship from the perspective of the photographer and the human subjects who made or appear in these photographs, Arluke and Rolfe show that the cat photographs are valuable windows into sets of cultural values that may have existed at the time.


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.