Arnold Genthe was a German-born photographer who worked out of a New York portrait studio in the early 1900s. He had an unusual method — he used a discreet camera and never warned his subjects before taking the shot. This approach helped him capture some of the most natural portraits of his era.
Genthe’s list of subjects read like a who’s who of the early 20th century. He photographed Sarah Bernhardt, Jack London, Anna Pavlova, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson, among many others.
His secret weapon was a cat named Buzzer. Genthe kept Buzzer in the studio and used him as a prop, placing the cat with subjects to put them at ease. A person holding or petting a cat naturally relaxes — and that showed in the final image.
The result was portraits that felt genuine rather than stiff and posed — a rare quality in studio photography of that time.
Buzzer appeared in Genthe’s studio photos for years, which puzzled many people. The explanation: there were actually four different cats, all named Buzzer, over the course of Genthe’s career.
