Lewis Reed’s Pet Photography
While I was going through Lewis Reed’s photograph collection trying to get them all sorted, I started noticing how many images of people posing with pets and animals he had. I thought, everybody loves their pets. Everyone can relate to these photos. Most of the photos involve cats, but there are some depicting dogs, a pony, a squirrel, a cow, a chicken, a rabbit, and even a spider!
If you thought filling your camera roll with pet pics was a modern phenomenon, these photos prove otherwise. These never before seen pet photographs feature glimpses into the lives of every day people and their relationships with their pets at the turn of the 20th century.

Man and his dog sitting on a horse in front of the Loudoun County Courthouse in Leesburg, Virginia. Photo by Lewis Reed
Cows are not the most athletic of creatures, they tend to just stand around a lot, so must be pretty easy to capture in a photo.
Getting up close and personal with a chicken can’t be easy. I imagine my grandfather sitting in the backyard for hours with his lens pointed at whichever chicken is closest to him in an effort to get the perfect shot. It’s pretty amazing the texture and detail he captured in this photo.
In the early 1900s, Lewis Reed also trained his camera on a part of the world most of us try to ignore: spiders. This photograph is incredibly unique, both for its subject matter and use of magnification that shows the spider in such detail.
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