Walter Chandoha

Walter Chandoha

Rarely seen black-and-white photographs from the earliest years of Chandoha's expansive cat photography career

The undisputed king of cat photography, Walter Chandoha defined the visual language of cat portraits in an extraordinary practice spanning over 80 years. His signature lighting technique captured each cat's unique personality and created timeless, empathetic and downright adorable images that continue to inspire artists and photographers today. Family Cats is a sweet and petite selection of black-and-white archival photographs hidden away for half a century. It includes images of Chandoha's original muse, Loco, whom he found and adopted during a New York City snowstorm in 1949. The other feline costars featured are the Chandohas' own family cats or rescue cats from an animal shelter in Greenwich Village. These cute and charming images are guaranteed to bring joy to the cat lover in your life. Walter Chandoha (1920–2019) was born in Bayonne, New Jersey. During World War II he served as a combat photographer in the US Signal Corps, and began photographing cats shortly after his return in the late 1940s. Over his career, Chandoha created a remarkable oeuvre of over 200,000 photographs, including some 90,000 images of cats.