Revealing the hidden beauty of bird flight | Xavi Bou | TEDxKonstanz

What traces would birds leave in the sky, if their path was visible? And how do the flights of birds visually differ from one another? With some research and exploration, Xavi Bou found the answer with his main project: Ornithographies. Inspired by the 19th Century Etienne-Jules Marey's Chronophotography, Xavi uses photographs to transform the sky into a canvas, by making visible the hidden beauty of the choreography of bird flight. Through this lens, flocks of birds appear as flowing, contorting ribbons. It's a view of collective behaviour like never before.
Xavi is a photographer from Barcelona with a great passion for nature and in particular for Ornithology. His photographs have been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Geo and many more. What brought him so far is his passion for his work and the eagerness to bring invisible footprints of birds to visibility.

Intro animation by Mike Costelloe. Music intro from Phase 3 by Xylo-Ziko, used under CC BY-NC 4.0.
Studio filming by Xavi Narro.
Field filming by Daniel Cubero.
Video editing by Lilith Kugler. Xavi Bou graduated with a degree in Geology in 2003 from the University of Barcelona. In 2004 he went on to complete his studies in photography at Grisart International School of Photography, and for the next decade, Xavi worked in the advertisement and fashion industry combining it with
teaching photograpy.

However, Xavi’s love of nature was always present, so in 2012 he embarked on Ornitographies; 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. Ornitographies moves away from the purely scientific practice of Chronophotography that 19th century photographers Eadward Muybridge and Étienne Jules 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.”

Xavi’s 2015 debut of Ornitographies 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 Ornitographies in Australia, Holland, The United States, Spain, Switzerland, France, Russia, Greece, Germany or Mexico.

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. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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