Walter Chandoha Herds Cats

“Cats! They drive you crazy and they blind you with love,” writes Grace Coddington, former creative director of Vogue US, at the opening of the book’s foreword. In 1949, as a snowstorm sweeps New York, Walter Chandoha, a young freelance photographer just demobilised after serving in the US Signal Corps, picks up a stray kitten and slips it into his coat pocket to give to his wife, Maria. Each evening, between 11 p.m. and 11:10 p.m., the kitten gives in to fits of madness that Chandoha starts to capture on film. He names him Loco, Spanish for “mad.”