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
- Paolo Pellegrin
- Editions Xavier Barral
- 2021
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- Novogen
- Dániel Szalai
- The Eriskay Connection
- 2021
Novogen is a project focusing on the eponymous breed of chickens that was developed in order to use its eggs in the production of pharmaceutical products such as medicines and vaccines. Through the investigation of the industrialised farming of the Novogen White Light chicken, Dániel Szalai (HU) intends to articulate questions and dilemmas regarding technology and man’s relation to nature.
The core of the book is formed by an extensive series of portraits of individual chickens besides photographs documenting the environment of the production facilities and the process of vaccine production. The images are supplemented by a reflective text by philosopher Fahim Amir, a selection of extracts from the management guide of the Novogen White Light and the marketing materials of the company that produces them.
Besides posing questions about our understanding of the natural, Szalai believes that the way these chickens are ‘conceptualised’ can be a metaphor for human positions in the job market, or in the political domain.
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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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- Empty Nests
- Atsuko Murano Abalos
- LibroArte
- 2021
“Empty Nests” is a photo series by Japanese artist Atsuko Murano Abalos of stork nests that she discovered during a short stay in the Alsace region in France in fall of 2019. All the nests she found were empty; the birds had already raised their young and embarked on the long journey to Africa. But seeing the many empty nests atop trees, chimneys and other high places, meticulously constructed from flimsy materials to satisfy the needs of their family, stirred something within Murano Abalos.
At first sight, her photographs seem to pay homage to the birds’ craftsmanship, dexterity and ingenuity, or to find humor (and admiration) in the bravery and brazenness of the nests’ locations. But with each turn of the page, new themes emerge and manifest themselves, and soon the photographs reveal a deeper fascination rooted in the emptiness of the nests – as self-constructed homes, as symbols of fertility and family values, as signifiers of hundreds of years of cohabitation.
“When a bird builds a next, it doesn’t waste resources to show someone its taste, preferences, financial strength, social standing, nor to complicate the nest’s function. The bird does not think, nor does it make comments about things like making the nest for nation, for god, or for the environment and society; therefore preventing distractions for potentially making big mistakes. It only knows and acknowledges the needs of its own body, and the need for caring for its children.”
― from Hiroshi Nakamura’s afterword “Capturing the Unseen” (included in Japanese and in English translation)→more -
- A Sensitive Education
- Francesca Todde
- Départ Pour l’Image
- 2020
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.→more -
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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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- "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 -
- 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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- A Song of Life
- Diana Michener
- Steidl
- 2018
A Song of Life presents Diana Michener’s most recent body of work, poignant photographs of animals that for the artist have become close to self-portraits.
Michener began photographing animals unexpectedly during a trip to India in 2006 where, intimidated by the chaos of the street, she wandered into a zoo and turned her lens to its rhinoceros, elephants and gazelles. Haunted by the resulting images of confinement, Michener became increasingly obsessed with them and decided to expand the project, first at the menagerie at Paris’ Jardin des Plants and later in various zoos throughout Europe and the USA. During her visit to each zoo, Michener remained silent and still for hours in front of the cages, almost in communion with these creatures who take on a close to mythical dignity in her photos.
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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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