The High Life is the fruit of a two-fold collaboration: first between two curators, and second between the two curators and fifty-four photographers. Some of the latter have specialized in the photography of birds; others have completed a project or two on the subject and then moved on to other things; still others have only occasionally – sometimes quite by chance – found themselves making a striking single picture of a bird.
A good number of the photographers in The High Life are wildlife photographers, while others fall into that slightly awkward category of ‘art photographer’—meaning essentially that they point their cameras where and when they wish. Of that first wildlife variety, some stick to birds, while others focus on a wide a variety of animals. Of the non-wildlife photographers, some define themselves as conceptualists, more concerned with the language of photography and its paradoxes, while others are fashion imageneers, using birds and their colorful feathers as dazzling props. Studio practitioners, documentary photographers and so-called street photographers complete the cast of characters on the picture-making side.
As for the subjects, the birds themselves, representatives of a species so much more varied and spectacular (and so much older) than our own, the curators have amassed a diverse cast of performers!
The High Life follows in the footsteps of a companion volume, Flora Photographica, which also limited its scope to the 21st century. Flowers and birds have a long, symbiotic history, and one project has led logically to the other.
In recent decades we have seen an ever-increasing knowledge about birds and their behaviours, and we humans are slowly shedding our ignorance and our prejudice. Perhaps we are best thinking of this moment as one of transition, where we still can marvel at avian spectacle and at the same time, look at birds with more realism, and more empathy.
