Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek isn’t sure how he ended up shooting a calendar. The Austrian photographer and director’s main work was campaigns for the likes of Apple and Adidas, so he was confused when a Viennese art publisher asked him to shoot one. “Half in fun I told them: ‘Sure, let’s do a cat calendar.’” Inspired by Dalí Atomicus (1948), a photograph by Salvador Dalí and Philippe Halsman, featuring the surrealist artist and three flying felines, the Jumping Cats series was born. De Koekkoek says his subjects’ amazing acrobatics are just what cats do when you’re not looking. “At first they were sceptical about me hanging out with them 24/7, but after a while they didn’t care. They started jumping and dancing around the house.”
[This gallery was amended on 1 January 2024 to remove one of the images from the original selection]
