cover image The Cat in Photography

The Cat in Photography

Sally Eauclaire. Little Brown and Company, $29.95 (198pp) ISBN 978-0-8212-1782-5

``Cats and photographers alike must be stealthy, patient, opportunistic, and curious.'' Proving her point, Eauclaire ( The New Color Photography ) unveils 100 duotones that show cats and their virtues. In Henri Cartier-Bresson's ``Shop Window, Lille (Nord),'' a white feline kneels and stares, seeming stupefied by a deluge of overhanging underwear for sale in a store. A picture by Eugene Atget, ``Cour de Rouen,'' inserts a cat as a small but delicious element in the design of a dignified, decaying doorway. Almost as satisfying as the photographs included here by Weegee, Andre Kertesz, Eliot Erwitt and Helen Levitt are those by ``photographers unknown''--cats held captive for the camera by a couple of grim, prim little girls; a gigantic specimen sprawled safely in the lap of a solemnly protective child. There are also cats putting up with the silliness of fashionable ladies, and a solitary kitten crowded in with four sad children in their rooftop tenement bed. Only a handful of generic fluff, happily, can be found. (Oct.)