Birds on the Brain; Jean Luc Mylayn

Here’s a good way to spend a weekend; sit on the porch with a pair of binoculars and a copy of Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song. You’ll never be the same.

Or, you can make like Jean Luc Mylayn, and live among the birds for years. Mylayn’s self-titled new book from Twin Palms documents his intense fixation with his feathered friends– an obsession that translates more into a lifestyle than into scads of images. Mylayn even makes his own lenses. From a recent review on Artnet:

“Since 1976 Jean-Luc Mylayne has led a nomadic life, travelling
for weeks and months on end in search of his photographic subjects. Although Mylayne has, by necessity, a deep knowledge of ornithology, his
work bears little relation to the images of wildlife photographers. He
does not pursue his prey with a telephoto lens, and is not searching
for the exotic or the unusual.

Mylayne has produced fewer than 150 photographs during his life.
Unsurprising given that each image, although recorded in a split
second, in fact embodies months and months sometimes years– of patient
work, watching and waiting, because artist and bird have to be
intimately acquainted before the portrait can be captured.

Mylayne describes the bird as the “actor” to his “director’. And like a
film director, every aspect of the scene has been carefully designed
beforehand in his mind– the quality of light (often artificial), the
time of day, the season, the composition of the landscape elements–
leaving only the bird’s presence to complete the picture. As the bird
flies into the frame to assume its designated position, the shutter
clicks, and the photograph– perhaps a year after conception– is finally
finished.”

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 367, February-March 2006

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 336, April-May 2005

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 295, March-April 2005 1/2 & 2/2

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 284 February-March 2004

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 140, February-March-April 2001

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. B10, November-December 2000

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 63, January February 1987

Jean Luc Mylayne, No. 104 November-December 1991

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling No. B10. I love that homegrown lens focus; no 1.2 for Jean Luc! Sometimes it’s less about the destination and more about the journey. We’re philosophical today. Some Mylayne wisdom:

“When I see a bird, I see at the same time that bird on a tree near the
house. I see everything as an ensemble, and I realize that’s how I see
everything in life. . . . With my lenses, I can take in that place,
then the tree, the bush, the house. I try to capture all those places
at the same moment, just like our eye travels from one spot to another
in taking in the scene, and I try to reconstitute it.”

Hear a very cool artcast interview the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle put together about this work, here. And see more images on Gladstone’s site.

**ALSO be sure to check out Stephen Gill’s work on birds.