Scattered Feathers

(2017- )

The ivory-billed woodpecker, an avian species widely considered to be extinct, has become an icon, particularly among bird watchers, and is emblematic of so many of the problems that have plagued the Deep South since Reconstruction. Scattered Feathers is a work that explores the connections between the ivory-billed woodpecker, its habitat and the communities that surround these areas where the bird was spotted in the early part of the twenty-first century. Bird watching and recurrent patterns play a large part in the work and the resultant photographs track a kind of spiritual journey from the forests of Louisiana and the laboratories of LSU and Cornell to the heart of the town of Tallulah, where the innocent, small-town mentality of years gone by is an endangered thing in and of itself.

This story started with an existential dread I began to experience, as environmental concerns across the world grew in recent years. After reading Tim Gallagher’s The Grail Bird, my intrigue with the plight of the ivory-billed woodpecker slowly became Scattered Feathers. Within the story of the ivory-billed I saw a mirror for so many of our current crises. The town of Tallulah, LA was  ground zero for the deforestation that destroyed the bird’s habitat and it fascinated me as a corollary to the the story of the bird. I embarked on a photographic exploration that slowly tied together my interests in the bird, its environment and the slow decline of the community of Tallulah.

In the final analysis, Scattered Feathers shouldn’t be read as a record of what literally happened to the ivory-billed woodpecker, or what might become of the species in the future. Chances are good that ornithologists may never see the bird again, even if it does still exist. And that’s the point. If the species does still survive, it will continue to do so only because we are unable to see it, unable to intervene in its future. The work herein should instead be considered as my evidence, my findings in a search for meaning where there has been much neglect. I rediscovered the mythology of a South that was slowly fading and could only re-emerge when I confronted the pains that we as Southerners have endured.

Read my MFA thesis here: Scattered Feathers