ORNITHOGRAPHIES: REVEALING THE HIDDEN BEAUTY IN BIRD FLIGHTS: Xavi Bou

Spanish photographer Xavi Bou's works reveal the hidden beauty of bird flights.

His grandfather instilled in him a passion for nature from the time he was a little boy. That passion impelled Xavi toward the natural sciences, and in 2003 he graduated with a degree in Geology from the University of Barcelona. In 2004 he went on to complete his studies in photography, and for the next decade, Xavi worked in the advertisement and fashion industry combining it with teaching photography.

However, Xavi’s love of nature was always present, so in 2012 he embarked on Ornithographies; photography inspired by his curiosity about the invisible patterns traced by birds in flight. “My intention is to capture the beauty of the bird’s flight in a single moment, making the invisible visible. Ornithographies moves away from the purely scientific practice of Chronophotography that 19th-century photographers Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne Julies Marey developed. It is the balance between art and science, a project of naturalist discovery, and, at the same time, an exercise of visual poetry.”

In his work, art and science unite to capture a moment that is past, present, and future, all at once.

Xavi’s 2015 debut of Ornithographies instantly caught the attention of international publications and collectors, and his work has since been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Geo, and Sonntag, among many others. Xavi has exhibited Ornithographies in Australia, Holland, The United States, Spain, Switzerland, France, Russia, and Greece.

When Xavi is not setting up his tripod on a roof, rock, or windswept plain, he is at work in his studio in the center of Gracia, Barcelona, preparing future exhibitions and editing a book of his work.