I love the 20×200 Project– I’ve gotten some great art, cheaply, that way. Today a couple prints by Todd Forsgren went up for sale, and they might be some of the best photos I’ve seen there yet– but I can’t buy them. They are too intense to go on my wall.
From the artist’s statement:
To create his paintings, John James Audubon shot birds and contorted their bodies into dramatic poses by wiring and pinning them onto boards. The quirky and flamboyant postures he used were not immediately popular with the scientific community, but today they are renowned.
It was Roger Tory Peterson who pioneered the idea of a field guide. His guides highlight observable marks, pointed out by carefully placed arrows, which allow for the identification of birds at a distance. Peterson painted thousands of systematic illustrations of birds in static poses based on photographs, bird skins, and field observations. Field guides have allowed hobbyists, artists, and scientists to identify birds with binoculars instead of a shotgun.
Ornithologists now use mist nets. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet. Then the bird is released.
I photographed these birds while they are caught in mist nets, moments before the ornithologist extracts them. Here, the birds inhabit a fascinating space between our framework of the bush and the hand. It is a fragile and embarrassing moment before they disappear back into the woods, and into data.
It *is* too fragile and embarrassing to go on my wall. I couldn’t look at those birds, day after day, caught in those nets. I would definitely own a book of work by Forsgren, and look at the photos occasionally.
Anyway, if you love these birds, hurry hurry, because the prints will probably sell out very soon!
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