Ornithological Photographs


$50 

Hardcover 

6 X 8.5 inches, 
146 pages, 
57 color images 

ISBN# 9781942084068 

Published October 2015 by Daylight Books


These photographs depict birds that have been temporarily caught in mist nets during ornithological research. It is a unique moment, just before a researcher removes the bird from the net to be weighed and measured (and thus the bird becomes quantified by these concise numbers). The bird is then released and flies away, disappearing back into the forest as well as into the data the scientists have gathered. In these nets the birds dangle between our framework of ‘the bird in the hand and the bird in the bush,’ the wild animal seems neither known nor unknown. I have sought out this moment as a space to consider our values and balance our empathy with our capability to think abstractly.


The book includes four essays: an introduction by Brian W. Forsgren and texts by John A. Tyson, James Lowen, and Susan Wegner. With illustrations by Julian Montague.