Bernard Plossu, Des oiseaux, 2018

Migratory traveler, as he calls himself, Bernard Plossu has been roaming the world for years, capturing through his lens furtive moments where birds are caught in flight forming immense clouds, standing alone in the middle of an expanse of water, balanced on electric wires or even hovering solitary among the peaks. Flying fascinates the photographer, from the intoxication of the speed of swallows to the hypnotic immobility of large raptors letting themselves be carried by the wind at altitude. He shows fragments of the world, a world where birds reinvest our space. The essay by ornithologist Guilhem Lesaffre evokes a fundamental aspect of bird life: migration, highlighted here with the photographs of Bernard Plossu.

This work, together with that of Pentti Sammallahti, inaugurates the Birds collection celebrating, through the eyes of different artists, their immense presence in a world where they are today weakened.