Why Are These Adorable Kids Called Pets?
A Utah photographer’s 19th-century sense of humor creates a modern mystery
Utah's Best Crop. Its Pets, about 1863–88, Charles William Carter. Albumen silver print. Getty Museum, 84.XC.729.149
Body Content
In our humble opinion, Getty’s always-growing collection is one of the best places on the internet to inspire curiosity.
Take the above image—found in our vast but easy-to-browse online collection—for example. Titled Utah’s Best Crop. Its Pets, it’s actually a photographic collage of babies. Why are they called pets? And how come they’re Utah’s best crop? And why are you seeing double?
Photographs curator Paul Martineau has written extensively about images like this one, and gave us some much-needed context for this adorably confounding work of art.
Why Are These Adorable Babies Called Pets?
“The title is intended to be humorous,” said Martineau. The phrase ‘my pet’ was often used as a term of endearment like ‘my dear.’” This photo, taken between 1863 and 1888, is an interesting window into the lingo of the time.
Why Are the Kids Called Crops?
This is another play on words. Salt Lake City, Utah, where photographer Charles William Carter took these photos, was experiencing a population boom. Carter ran a portrait studio and made his living taking portraits of kids, the products of this particularly fertile period in northern Utah.
Why Are We Seeing Double?
This photograph is actually a stereograph: an image that looks 3D when viewed through a stereoscope. More than a work of art, it was a kind of entertainment. “Stereographs were extremely popular from the 1860s through the 1880s,” says Martineau. “Newspapers and magazines did not begin to carry many illustrations until the late 1880s. Stereographs were considered a form of entertainment.”
How Did This Come to the Getty Collections?
This image is part of the vast and fascinating collection of idiosyncratic photographs amassed by Samuel J. Wagstaff, which contains exuberant moments from automotive history, images of some of the last buffalo, and stills from the silent film era.
When Getty acquired these photos in 1984, it was a significant moment in the history of photography. “It was foundational. It contained more than 26,000 objects covering the entire history of photography from its beginnings in the early 19th century to the 1980s,” said Martineau.
Interested in learning more? Read more about the Wagstaff collection here, or read Paul Martineau’s wonderful coverage of the collector in the book The Thrill of the Chase.
If you find something fascinating in the Getty collections and want to know more about it, tag us @GettyMuseum on social media.
