Photographer Compares Owners And Cats and Dog Portraits

An ideal pair: cats with their human doubles

Gerrard Gethings, a professional animal photographer, has claimed that people tend to choose a pet that looks like them.

In a series of striking comparisons called #doyoulooklikeyourdog and #doyoulooklikeyourcat, he compares the portraits of humans and their pets.

There is a good chance that you have seen some cats on the web during the past decade. A cat chasing its tail. The cats attempt ill-timed jumps between pieces of furniture.

In the case of Gerard Gethings, it was a cat that resembled actor David Schwimmer.

“There’s something about the shape of Schwimmer’s face that’s quite interesting,” says the London-based photographer, “and the cat had exactly the same face. That pushed me over the edge, into thinking there was something in it.”

Photographer Gerrard Gethings portrays animals that resemble classical paintings: creatures with complexity, pathos, and character.

Gerrard Gethings was born in Wigan in 1970. In rural Lancashire, he spent most of his youth in the outdoors and woods.

Birds, insects, and animals captivated him from a young age.

A true artist, he studied photography and fine art painting at Sheffield University due to a talent for both. At the time of meeting Terry O’Neill, a renowned photographer from the late Twentieth Century, Gethings was a rising abstract painter.

Follow Gerrard’s daily feed on Instagram: gezgethings

The photographer shot the portraits of the pets and their owners and compared them side by side.

Do You Look Like Your Dog?

In 2018, Gethings published a series of photos of dogs that resemble people – based on appearance, temperament, or hairstyle – which became a bestselling memory-card game, matching poodles and chow chows with their human counterparts.

“Everyone’s seen someone who looks like a dog. It’s been an idea forever,” he says. “But I don’t think people have thought, ‘That person looks a lot like a cat.’ I suppose there’s a feline quality some people can have, but not in the same way. They don’t have huge beards or things dogs have, like a centre parting and long hair – easy matches. Cats are more difficult.”