Cats also suffer from the norm

Put on show, itemised, judged… cats are also subjected to the tyranny of the norm. ‘Apparently, during feline exhibitions, each animal is judged in relation to the norms of its breed’, artist Hayato Wakabayashi tells us. In 2015, he accompanied a friend to one such event and came to question the conventions of animals. A year after, he began his series, Standard, where he created portraits of these racialised cats in Japan.

Graduating from the Nihon University art school in 2003, Hayato Wakabayashi is now an independent photographer. With these clichés, he aims to re-situate each participant of such competitions on a plane of equality, revealing their individual beauty beyond subjectivity, unlike a jury. Against a plain background, the artist captures them in the manner of artisanal pieces, highlighting their physical characteristics, colours, fur, and curves within a pure scenography.

It’s the master who makes the cat

In order to define his own selection, the artist cannot stay within pure objectivity and must choose the species that he would prefer to take pictures of. For that, he has had to make compositions with different masters. Alongside them he has realised that in the end these cats were bred to correspond to specific and idealised characteristics with respect to their breeds: their tails, the form of their heads, their fur… The human gaze fixed on the animal prevails on what we think to be natural. ‘A causal educational relation exists between breeders and cats. What’s important to know is which cats the breeder counts on breeding’, explains the artist.

Whilst Hayato Wakabayashi was making this series, he learned his wife was pregnant. He couldn’t stop himself from making a parallel between the breeding of such cats and the way in which pregnancy is monitored monthly in Japan by a gynaecologist-obstetrician. Whether it be the pedigree of an animal or the birth of a child, would the concept of ‘natural’ become illusory? ‘Humans do not give birth or reproduce naturally either’, insists Hayato Wakabayashi. This is a question that permeates all of the artist’s work. Whether flowers, oceans, or even grottos, the photographer constantly returns to this essential theme, notably in his series that focuses on terrestrial force, Vanishing, incessantly questioning our relationship with nature.

Standard (2019), a series by Hayato Wakabayashi, is available on his website.