With A Sensitive Education the photographer Francesca Todde explores, through the figure of bird educator Tristan Plot, the possibilities of empathy between different natural species.
The narrative, far from being a naturalist documentation, is rather focused on the emotional sphere and sensitivity of birds and humans. The photographic research develops in resonance with the delicacy of this wordless dialogue.
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- A Sensitive Education
- Francesca Todde
- Départ Pour l’Image
- 2020
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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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- 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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- Des oiseaux
- Leila Jeffreys
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2020
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
- Albarrán Cabrera
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2020
The poetic universe of Spanish photographers duo Albarrán Cabrera is presented here through a dreamscape journey in the land of birds. Between reality and illusion, their photographs questions our relationship to the tangible world and vibrate gently through a wide palette and different photographic techniques: platinum and palladium prints, cyanotypes, gelatin prints, and pigmented printing…
Each photograph is like a story that seems to have been paused. The birds seem to be straight out of fantastical fairy tales; they merge into space, are revealed on reflective surfaces, and slip into the undergrowth whereas sometimes their physical presence is underlined by a tight framing. The birds are revealed through abstracting shapes sometimes simple dots and shadows. Albarrán Cabrera leave the interpretation of their images to the memory of the viewer and let our imagination fly.
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- Des oiseaux
- Graciela Iturbide
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2019
A major figure of Latin-American photography, Graciela Iturbide’s approach combines the documentary and the lyrical. Off-center compositions, graphic effects, and heavy shadows create a poetic universe where a feeling of strangeness is combined with one of harsh reality. The powerful equilibrium of her compositions produces skies filled with birds, comical, unexpected situations where chickens are pictured sitting wisely on market stalls, while elsewhere chirping flocks appear to invade the scene in agile, flowing movements. For Iturbide, living birds represent freedom. But death is never far away in her work, nor indeed is a certain sense of the surreal.
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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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- Des oiseaux
- Byung-Hun Min
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2020
Making visible the silence, the simplicity of nature and a sense of passing time. The photographs of Korean Byung-Hun Min, made between 1998 and 2020 throughout he world, take on the evanescence of a pencil sketch. With their subtle contrasts, their play of silky tones, they seem to show a fleeting instant between clarity and dissolution.
Min’s birds live in an ethereal space. They seem enveloped in a white veil, in a silvery light. The virtual monochromy of the image, the uniformity of the tones, oscillating between white and gray, the absence of perspectives and contrasts, the simplicity of the construction and the minimalism of the forms reproduce a reality that has become fantastical. The photographer’s painstaking work printing each negative allows him to reproduce not only what he saw, but also what he perceived. Min’s birds are an invitation to contemplation.
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- Des oiseaux
- Bernard Plossu
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2018
Half traveler and half migratory photographer, as he likes to introduce himself, Bernard Plossu strides along the world since many years. He captures through his lens furtive moments, where birds are flying in huge swarms or caught alone, standing proudly in the middle of a puddle, or gliding high up in the sky, among the peaks. The photographer looks at birds with tenderness and curiosity, a gaze which underlines fantasy and a “surrealistic” approach, as explains the critic Francesco Zanot about his images.
The flight fascinates the photographer, obsessed with the euphoric speed of swallows as well as the hypnotic inertness of large raptors drifting through the wind at high altitude. Plossu’s photographs allow us to see fragments of the world, a world in which birds have reinvested our environment.
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- 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
- 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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- Finding Trust
- Annie Marie Musselman
- Kehrer Verlag
- 2013
American photographer Annie Marie Musselman has a series of photographs that are sure to tug at your heart – especially if you're an animal lover. Titled Finding Trust, the photographs show injured wild animals being cared for at a wildlife rehabilitation center. Musselman started shooting the project seven years ago at a small sanctuary 75 miles away from Seattle, called the Sarvey Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. In the process of documenting the animals' lives, she was personally involved with helping the patients as well and in turn they helped heal her from the grief of her mother and father's deaths. Annie Marie Musselman lives in Seattle, Washington. Finding Trust has been featured in several magazines and exhibitions. Her images have been published in American Photography 25, Outside, National Geographic Magazine, Harper Collins, Elle, Travel + Leisure, The New York Times and Newsweek among others. She is represented by Bianco Artist Management. Currently she is working on a project with the wolves of Wolf Haven International, with a comission by the Getty Images Grant for Good. "Coming to Sarvey felt like coming home. The work that I produced there documents the delicate union that exists between humans and animals. These pictures were made with the intention to show the world an upclose view into the faces and souls of these wild animals. To look into their eyes as if looking into our own." Annie Marie Musselman
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- "Click", said the camera.
- Balthasar Burkhard, Markus Jakob
- Lars Müller Publishers
- 2018
The beloved children’s book “Click”, said the camera., first published in 1997, is available again. It features animal portraits by photographer Balthasar Burkhard, who started the series in 1995.
The twenty animals meet for the photographer’s beauty contest. On Burkhard’s portraits all the animals are equally beautiful. The protagonist of the story is a shy donkey watching the cheerful activity. Markus Jakob describes the illustrious rendezvous with kind and humorous words.
Balthasar Burkhard (1944–2010) was a Swiss photographer well-known for his large-format black-and-white photography.
Markus Jakob (born 1954) writes features, reports, and miscellanea for various media.→more -
- 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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