The Photographed Cat.

Paul Schiek, from the series Good By Angels... (2006)

I like cats, and especially photographs of cats, even the very corny ones that can be found on birthday calendars in peoples toilets and little girls pozie albums, I just think they are adorable. They seem to speak directly to my maternal instinct without forging any real responsibility since its just an image and not a fluffy feline of flesh and blood.

This photograph by Paul Schiek, from the series Good By Angels... evoked a similar reaction at first, though I dont think it has a place in the visual cute cat vocabulary used in gift shop products. This shift in apprehension is largely due to the lampshade-like thing around the cats neck. You hardly ever, I dare to say never, find a postcard with a cat wearing a thing like that. This thing indicates that the cat has an open wound on its body somewhere that it is not allowed to lick. I never fully understood this veterinarians conduct, since I always thought that animals act on instinct and therefore it must be, what we humans like to call natural (and thus correct?) behaviour. But maybe its also nice to know that even the natural behaviour of cats can be bad for them. Human beings, like myself, tend to be spontaneous or instinctive also and not always with self-intended positive results.

Comparing of human and animal behaviour and the appropriation of their gestures and expressions seems to be an inevitable part of our relation with them. The window that stands between the photographer and the cat in this respect functions not only as a division but could be seen as metaphorical mirror. We can see the cat but we can only guess what the cat is thinking based on what we think, when one assumes that the cat even thinks, which I tend to do since I think myself

This could maybe be said for every uncaptioned photograph. We see what is depicted, sometimes even quite clearly, but we cannot really connect any truthful meaning to it. We only assume, based on prior experience and gained knowledge. The window to me now appears as a photograph in a photograph.

But one what side of that photograph are we? At first glance I thought that the cat was inside and the photographer and automatically the viewer, me, outside. After seeing the hinge in the lower-right corner of the window I thought it was the other way around. I immediately felt guilty since the cat, next to being wounded and looking ridiculous, now was outside, in the dark, maybe even in the cold, and was being viewed, registered and flashed in the face from the comfortable inside.

Then I realized that probably few people hang their blinds on the outside of a building.

Lauralouise Hendrix Amsterdam, August 23, 2010