Leila Jeffreys takes us with this book into a journey through tropical forests and jungles all over the world towards astonishing bird species that she has been taking studio portraits of since 2008: “I’ve long noticed how many birds have specific expressions, just like us”, she explains. Jeffreys’ images, which rely on a profound connection with her sitters cultivated over many years, are an exercise in both artistry and empathy. Cultivating the art of waiting, Jeffreys develops a gallery of whimsical and hyper-realist portraits where all the birds come attired in their most beautiful finery with sumptuous plumage colors. One by one, they let their character shine through: graceful, mischievous, shy, proud, timid, poseur, all of which seem to want to chat to the viewer. Her practice underlines how humans anthropomorphize animals and what we really do share.
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- Des oiseaux
- Leila Jeffreys
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2020
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- Animal Books for Jaap Zeno Anna Julian Luca
- Lous Martens
- Roma Publications
- 2017
Lous Martens about the book: "Seventeen years ago our grandson Jaap was born. That was the start of an animal book for Jaap. I used a dummy for the OASE journal of architecture and loosely pasted in pictures of animals that I had clipped from newspapers and magazines about art, literature and science. Plus stamps and photos from advertising brochures. Then Zeno was born and the same thing happened: an animal book for Zeno. Now I was working on two books at once. Then came Anna. Julian. Luca. At this point, there were five books-in-the-making on the table. And none of those five are finished yet. The children, as well as myself, enjoy seeing the small, ever-evolving changes. The additions. These books were never intended for the outside world where I had found all the pictures. Never intended to be published. Now they lie here, grouped into one big book, because others have convinced me it's what they deserve."
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- Swarm
- Lukas Felzmann
- Lars Müller Publishers
- 2012
“The buzz word is swarm intelligence, which has acquired an unforeseen reality in the era of Facebook and Twitter. The behavior of a collective without a center has become a social phenomenon, which is not only of interest to natural scientists, but also particularly to politicians and economists.” (Peter Pfrunder in his contribution to the book) Swarm is a breathtaking photographic series exploring the flock movements of migrating birds. The photographs offer a unique view of the beauty but also the complexity and diversity of shape variations. A swarm sitting on the ground mirrors the surface of the earth like a skin, but as soon as it lifts up it becomes a fluid three-dimensional system in constant flux. This aerial ballet reveals a rhythm of upward explosion and downward, cascading movement. At times the forms seem to explode, blooming like flowers or expanding outward like fireworks. At other times they appear more stable, slowly drifting like a negative image of stellar constellations. Swarm looks up into the sky and follows flight through the dynamic landscape of streams of air.
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- Die Anthropomorpha: Tiere im Krieg
- Malin Gewinner
- Matthes & Seitz Berlin
- 2017
Fallschirmspringende Hunde, ferngesteuerte Haie, Raketen, die von Tauben gelenkt werden, Katzen mit implantierten Abhörgeräten : In diesem Buch geht es um Tiere, die der Mensch zu Kriegsteilnehmern gemacht hat. Die militärische Nutzung von Tieren spielt seit Anbeginn der Kriegsgeschichte eine entscheidende Rolle. Tiere sind ständige Wegbegleiter, jedoch keineswegs ebenbürtige Partner der Menschen. 32 erstaunliche, skurrile und bizarre Tiersoldaten dieses Buches zeigen, dass der Mensch keine Grenzen kennt, wenn es darum geht, sich gegenüber dem Feind einen Vorteil zu verschaffen. Woher kommt die Selbstsicherheit, mit der der Mensch sich die Fähigkeiten der Tiere zunutze macht ? Welche Konsequenzen hat das für Mensch und Tier, und wie und warum gerät der Vormachtsglaube der Menschen gerade zu Kriegszeiten ins Wanken?
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- Des oiseaux
- Michael Kenna
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2019
A master of landscape photography, Michael Kenna’s images reveal a world that is almost evanescent. One where diaphanous light enshrouds nature in mystery, with islands, rivers, and even summits standing out in the distance. “In all of my work there is a certain prevailing theme which has something to do with memory, with time, with change.” Birds soar overhead, tracing aerial figures in fleecy skies, come to rest on a branch, or fly gracefully over hazy expanses of water. Suspended flight, halted moments in time—one that is frozen, immutable.
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- Citizen
- Mårten Lange
- Études Studio
- 2015
The common street pigeon is actually a species called the rock dove. Their natural habitat is cliff walls. But our cities are rather good replacements for cliffs, and I find the pigeon's semi-domesticated existence fascinating. The pigeons don't belong here, but they thrive. It's not natural, but maybe it's better than nature. Looking at the pigeons made me think of how humans live, in a habitat constructed by us, for us, but one that is often quite hostile or alienating. We share urban life with the pigeons, and they are citizens, too.
These animals are overlooked, hated even, but at this level of magnification they become individuals. I like that, the elevation of the banal. I like to think of them more as portraits than mugshots.' (LANGE, 2016)
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- Des oiseaux
- Paolo Pellegrin
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2021
This new series by Paolo Pellegrin celebrates the eleventh title of the collection Des oiseaux (On birds). Magnum photographer best known for his works testifying to political, economic or even ecological upheavals, his curious mind leads him to focus on subjects that are sometimes more contemplative, where nature holds a major place. Thus, during a stay in Japan in 2019, Paolo Pellegrin, who left to witness the blooming of the cherry trees, is more struck by the majesty and the aerial ballet of a colony of black kites flying over the temple of Shimogamo, Shinto shrine of the 7th century, in the heart of a primary forest.
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- Bird Watching
- Paula McCartney
- Princeton Architectural Press
- 2010
A spotted wren perches on the limb of a pine tree in a field of daisies. A song sparrow stands ready to take flight from a snow-covered limb against a winter landscape. For many, these descriptions depict quintessential experiences of nature. As photographs in a bird-watcher s field journal they become something else entirely. Precious and desirable for being so rare, they transform into a kind of trophy that rewards the birdwatcher for his or her skill, tireless patience, and mastery over nature. At first glance, conceptual artist Paula McCartney's Bird Watching seems to be a most exemplary specimen of a birdwatching journal. Handwritten notations recording species, location, size, and markings describe well-rendered and flawlessly composed photographs of a wide variety of passerines, or perching birds, in their natural settings in locations across the United States. Page after page of the most wonderfully diverse species of birds are perfectly posed in picturesque natural settings—a bird-watcher's dream.
On second glance, however, the birds appear a bit too carefully arranged amid the tangle of brush and branches. An even closer look reveals stiff wire protrusions mounting each bird to its perch, matted tufts of overdyed faux feathers forming wings and splashes of paint creating eyes and beaks. McCartney has activated her atmospheric landscapes by adding synthetic decorative birds purchased at craft stores. This startling revelation has you wondering if the artificial might ultimately be more satisfying than the natural. Part document and part fiction, Paula McCartney's Bird Watching is a fanciful, homespun field guide to a woodland twilight zone where our unconscious need to control nature is indulged and our search for an unattainable ideal natural experience is fulfilled. Featuring a design that mimics the tactility of a real bird-watching journal and including essays by Darius Himes and Karen Irvine, this book will appeal to the dreamy naturalist in all of us.→more -
- Des oiseaux
- Pentti Sammallahti
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2018
Traveller-photographer Pentti Sammallahti captures the mysteries of nature on his travels and among these, the world of birds. Coastlines, swamps, parks, endless plains, forest clearings, snowy landscapes… In these isolated areas, birds slyly reveal their presence.
Like visual tales, his B&W photographs attest to his extraordinary eye for detail, to light that sculpts spaces, to silent expanses in which a human or animal presence suddenly appears. The experience of the image is twofold: beyond its narrative virtuosity, his use of a two-colour process, with immaculate whites (as in the plumage of his swans or pink flamingos) confronted with deep blacks, creates a play of textures and powerfully renders a world in which birds play a unique role.
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- Des oiseaux
- Rinko Kawauchi
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2021
This new series by Rinko Kawauchi celebrates the tenth title in the collection Des oiseaux. The Japanese photographer focused on swallows in Spring during birthing season in her neighborhood in the city of Chiba and, in particular, on the tiny nests that the birds build in window openings or in the underside of roofs, in order to protect their broods, which are fed by their parents for several weeks. Fascinated by this spectacle, with her characteristic poetry and sense of detail, Rinko Kawauchi brings out the marvelous in our daily lives and the ephemeral beauty of suspended moments. The swallows, thanks to their sharp wings, perch everywhere with ease and elegance, bathed in an opalescent light.
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- A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World
- Robert Zhao Renhui
- Steidl
- 2018
To what extent can we trust photography and science? Robert Zhao Renhui explores these questions in A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, which appears to be an authentic catalogue of plants and animals but is in fact entirely fictitious.
Renhui’s guide ostensibly “documents” 55 different animals, plants and environments that have been manipulated by man but do not appear to be, and examines the myriad ways in which humans are altering nature. Here are curious creatures that have evolved in often unexpected ways to cope with our changing world, including rhinoceroses with barely visible horns and monkeys dependent on food handed out by humans. Other organisms in the series are the products of human intervention, mutations engineered to serve various purposes from scientific research to the desire for ornamentation, such as man-made gelatin grapes, genetically modified tomatoes and “unbreakable” eggs.
All living things constantly adapt to the various pressures they face including predators, pollution and environmental change. Yet the human species has undeniably emerged as the main perpetrator of the dangers that threaten the survival of other life forms. A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World reminds us of this fact, and above all to retain a critical, cautious and ironic attitude to the “real.”
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- bird
- Roni Horn
- Steidl
- 2008
bird presents the culmination of Roni Horn’s long-running photographic series of taxidermied Icelandic wildfowl. Photographed at close range against white backgrounds (as though obeying the conventional format of studio portraiture) the birds are viewed from behind, their unique physiognomies and markings resulting in inscrutable shapes and patterns on the photographs’ surfaces.
Despite the singular form of the title, the birds in this series are presented in pairs, images that are hung side by side one another highlighting the differences and similarities between the two. The gesture of doubling — as an aesthetic and conceptual strategy — has been a recurrent motif for Horn since 1980, a tool that invites careful scrutiny from the viewer, altering the dynamic of the work. Horn’s images are accompanied by a text by the writer and curator Philip Larratt-Smith. Avoiding a dense, didactic reading of the series, Larratt-Smith has compiled an extended series of quotes, anecdotes and idioms, garnered from film, literature, photographers’ monographs and Horn’s own writings.
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- Des oiseaux
- Terri Weifenbach
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2019
Created in the space of her personal garden in Washington DC, Terri Weifenbach’s photographs reveal the secret world of nature populated by birds that nest in urban gardens. Oscillating between fantasy and reality, her images seem to be taken on the sly when birds race at top speed, dance, or settle, freeze, and gather in parliaments. The seasons follow in succession, the colours of the garden vary. Saturated light and colour, plays on blurred and crystal-clear details, and freeze frames depict a “supra-reality”. Terri Weifenbach immerses us in the infinitely small, transporting us into a particularly lively and marvelous world.
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- HANON
- Yoshinori Mizutani
- IMA Photobooks
- 2016
In Mizutani's images, flocks of great cormorants perched on the overhead power lines, which are a ubiquitous element of the Tokyo sky, become silhouettes that resemble musical notes on a score. In fact, the book of the series was titled HANON in reference to the French piano instruction book.
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