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Online press and editorial for Leila Jeffreys
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Conversations | Radio National
Presented by Sally Sara, Broadcast on ABC RN Thursday 20 June 2024
Leila Jeffreys' family loved adventure and the great outdoors.
Leila was born in the wilds of Papua New Guinea, and grew up in Western Australia. Her family also spent time living in a village in India, then on a houseboat in Kashmir.
When Leila grew up she decided she wanted to become a photographer.
But when she tried her hand at life as a freelancer she realised right away that it was utterly wrong for her.
One day she decided to build a small studio to photograph birds, and smuggled a posse of budgies into her workplace at the time to make some portraits of them.
In the process, she began her life as a bird photographer and invented an entirely new genre of art photography.
Gardening Australia
SERIES 35 | Episode 01 Broadcast on ABC Fri 2 Feb 2024 at 7:35pm
Leila Jeffreys is a photographer and video artist whose focus is working with birds.
Her fascination with birds started about 15 years ago with a desire to take portrait photos of birds, capturing their characters on film. These were displayed at human scale.
Living in the city, she became a backyard birdwatcher, and she noticed how backyard planting benefited some larger birds while smaller birds struggled, which got her involved in replanting more bushes and shrubs in her own garden.
The Dallas Morning News
Dan Singer
5 January 2024
At Erin Cluley Gallery, the relationship between humans and birds is the subject of a new exhibition, “Feathered,” that brings together artists from several countries. Drawing on various mediums including photography and watercolor, the artists spur viewers to “reconsider and reflect on their connection to birds and all non-human animals” through what the gallery calls a survey of contemporary art’s longstanding bond with the winged creatures.
Ballarat Times
Edwina Williams
November 3, 2023
“From an artist’s perspective, public art is probably my biggest passion,” ...“I have a real drive and desire to connect people to nature and so the opportunity to have work shown here is incredible.“ The exhibition was called High Society. I like to play with scale and take subjects that are seen as very tiny, such as budgies, and make… the scale huge.
Hyperallergic
Rhea Nayyar
12 October 2023
Best in Show: Pets in Contemporary Photography is a celebration of our unbreakable bond with our domesticated fuzzy, feathery, and scaly friends that perforates humanity’s delineation from the natural world. Both irrational love and endless humor, the hallmarks of life with animals, are rife in an exhibition on view at Fotografiska through January.
Photo London Magazine 106
23 June 2023
For our 106th issue, Photo London is delighted to feature Leila Jeffreys, an Australian based bird portrait artist and photographer. Best known for her captivating images of birds from Australia and around the world that explore and subvert the traditions of portraiture, Jeffreys’ avian subjects are photographed at human scale with a startling attention to colour, line, form and composition.
ABC RADIO - RN
Presented By Daniel Browning
Wed 19 Oct 2022
(From 32.39 min) Photographer Leila Jeffreys sees into the souls of birds, and is arguably Australia's leading ‘bird portraitist’. Her latest series of works feature a range of exotic birds with red markings, which reminded Leila of wounds. The Wound is the Place Where the Light Enters started as a kind of elegy, a sad song to the wholesale loss of wildlife in the devastating 2019 bushfires… but it didn’t end that way.
Australian Photography
12 October 2022
Acclaimed Australian bird portrait photographer Leila Jeffreys first exhibition in three years opens in Sydney today.
The wound is the place where the light enters, based on a line from a poem by the Persian poet Rumi (1207–1273), runs from 12 - 29 October at the Olsen Gallery in Sydney.
The series was inspired by Australia's horror 2019 bushfire season, which Jeffreys says gave rise to a moment of profound personal grief.
Australian Geographic
By Liz Ginis
6 October 2022
Heralded for her intimate, fine art photography, Leila Jeffreys explores the fragility and strength of birds in her latest exhibition, ‘The wound is the place where the light enters’.
Renowned bird photographer Leila Jeffreys‘ new exhibition, ‘The wound is the place where the light enters’, is inspired by a line from a poem by Rumi (1207–1273).
“The poem speaks to the fact that pain reveals and helps us cherish what truly matters,” Leila says. “We can only mourn what we deeply love.
Financial Review
by Aviva Lowy
June 3, 2021
Italian studies of people living in urban environments claim an “irrefutable relationship” between the presence of birds and human happiness. So writes ornithologist Guilhem Lesaffre, whose text accompanies the photographic book series Des Oiseaux (On Birds), from French arthouse publisher Atelier EXB.
It turns out even looking at pictures of birds makes people happy, if the book’s reception is anything to go by. Des Oiseaux has been a success since the first book in 2018, consistently outselling other titles in the Atelier EXB catalogue.
Each book presents the work of one photographer, and inclusion is by invitation only. The highly acclaimed artists come from around the world and are represented in top-tier museums.
Vogue Online
by Alexia Petsinis
April 6, 2021
Think you know what a Rose-crowned fruit dove is? Look closer. Contemporary artist Leila Jeffreys has based her practice on exploring the unique characteristics of Australia’s quintessential bird species; the colours of their plumage, the shape of their silhouettes, the curiosity of their gaze. Her upcoming Birdland exhibition at Manly Art Gallery & Museum invites us to reconnect with these feathered friends via her strikingly intimate lens. This series of photographs and video works celebrates the intrigue of birds as both a medium for artistic inspiration, and a reminder of nature’s power to ground us in the present moment.
Colossal
By Grace Ebert
September 25, 2020
Those of us who’ve been party to an awkward family photoshoot or embarrassing school picture have reason to feel envious of the birds Leila Jeffreys (previously) photographs. From a pair of stoic budgerigars to a yellow trio named “The Tweets,” the avian subjects are captured in sophisticated and graceful poses that highlight their most stunning features, from the curvature of their beaks to the singular barbs of their feathers.
Jeffreys often teams up with conservationists, ornithologists, and sanctuaries to determine her subjects before bringing them to a studio. When they’re together, the Australian photographer focuses on their personalities, hoping to capture their idiosyncratic tendencies. The result is intimate and engaging photographs at a human-scale, a choice that strays from traditional portraiture by centering a different species.
Mountain Living
By Laura Beausire
September 9, 2020
“My dad had a Pentax Spotmatic 35mm film camera. He was a keen photographer, and we traveled a lot overseas. That early memory must have sparked an interest and I took up photography. For me it was the pure passion of creating for the sake of creating (originally for no one else to see). Photography became my tool in understanding the world.”
Vogue Living
by Annemarie Kiely
August 27, 2020
Time-honoured craftsmanship and peerless attention to detail – it’s what to expect from any Hermès piece and the French leather specialist’s incredible new flagship store in the centre of Sydney is no different.
But a spectacular déclaration of Hermès regard for the knowing hand it is; one showcasing the craft of four Brisbane boatbuilders who spent nine months on site heat-bending timbers to form the snaking balustrade of a double-revolution stair. Intended to simulate the aerial prop roots of an Australian banyan tree, this spiralling structure also conjures the columnar build of a tornado twisting down from an abstraction of clouds created by ceiling cut-outs.
Whatever phenomenon reads into its form, the effect shakes up the classical propriety of heritage place, generates a dynamism, and delivers light into basement depths where Montel says he “invited the sun”. Walls the colour of Sydney sands and a sharply defined sun over the harbour at high noon bounce light onto the feathered brilliance of Leila Jeffreys’ bird portraits.
Art Almanac
August 20, 2020
Monash Gallery of Art (MGA), on behalf of the MGA Foundation, has announced the shortlisted finalists for the 2020 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize.
The judging panel – comprised of acclaimed artist Fiona Hall, NGA Senior Curator of Photography, Dr Shaune Lakin, and MGA Director, Anouska Phizacklea – selected the shortlist from over 1,000 entries, the most received in the prize’s history. The amount and calibre of the entries necessarily sparked a robust debate around narrowing down the field and landing on works that speak to such a challenging and pivotal moment in history.
Financial Review
By Lauren Sams
June 15, 2020
Art, too, is key to the Hermès universe, and an opportunity for the past to meet the present, and for France to meet Australia. Two equestrian portraits from the Emile Hermès collection sit among the leather and scarves, and two harnesses – a nod to the company’s heritage in making saddles and bridles – bookend the entrance door.
Downstairs, there are four photographs from Australian artist Leila Jeffreys and a print of Indigenous artist Gloria Pettyar’s Le rêve de Gloria, which has been made into a scarf for the brand in various colourways since 2009. In the window that faces Castlereagh St, the work of French sculptor Julien Salaud is presented against a video installation backdrop, Borealis, by Australian photographer and videographer Murray Fredricks.
DuJour
By Lauren Watzich
January 10, 2020
Past the polished displays of shirts, ties, and cufflinks at New York City’s Bergdorf Goodman Men’s Store and up the elevator to the second floor exists a new, tucked-away foodie haven called Goodman’s Bar.
Brought to life by BG’s in-house design team, the space boasts a rich, moody color palette accompanied by Art Deco elements that pay homage to the building’s architecture. Tying Goodman’s Bar’s chic look together is a medley of decorative lighting crafted by NYC-based Apparatus, bird photography by Leila Jeffreys, antique Franz Schuster chairs, and Tom Dixon backgammon tables and wingback chairs, but the warm-toned mural behind the bar is the statement piece.
Art Daily
December 20, 2019
“There exists a symbolic relationship between birds and trees,” says Leila Jeffreys. “Their survival depends on each other. We depend on them. High Society serves as a visual reminder to leave wild places for these other societies to enjoy, as well as our own.”
Travel + Leisure
November 25, 2019
It’s been a devastating month for the east coast of Australia. Bushfires fueled by wind and long-term drought conditions have spread across Queensland and New South Wales — the latter losing at least 2,400,000 acres so far this year, according to The Guardian.
The latest Climate Council report notes that the bushfires, which are part of the continent’s ecology, have become more frequent and more severe. The results are poor air quality, property damage, and the loss of human life. But the fires aren’t just impacting the people of Australia — animals are being chased from their homes, and that’s something Leila Jeffreys, an Australian bird photographer and advocate, has dedicated her work to.
Read Full Article Online
Prior Club
November 24, 2019
With her striking portraits of birds like the Bleeding Heart Dove, Leila Jeffreys turns her lens to the urgent plight and eccentric personalities of the world’s birds.
Gessato
November 1, 2019
A series that explores the close, symbiotic bond between birds and trees.
Following the Budgerigar series, which also became her first solo exhibition in Australia, photographic artist Leila Jeffreys presents a new collection of colorful portraits and photos centered around the budgerigar, or the parakeet. High Society features a series of large-format photos as well as a three-panel video art piece.
ABC Arts
October 2019
This intimate portrait follows beloved Australian bird photographer Leila Jeffreys' childhood in the Australian bush, through the grief of losing her father to her first exhibition in New York.
Talking Australia - Australian Geographic Podcast
October 29, 2019
Leila Jeffreys is a fine art photographer famous for her Australian bird portraits. Rather than capturing her motives in the outdoors she brings them into a photo studio environment and creates truly unique pictures of local birds. This gives her the ability to capture incredible detail and the results are pictures that bend the idea of where nature photography ends and fine art begins. On this episode she talks about how she ended up in photography, what motivated her to focus on bird portraits and her most special photo shoot ever.
Artist Profile
By Bella Chidlow
October 16, 2019
In her first Australian solo exhibition in five years, 'High Society', Leila Jeffreys explores new territory. Releasing over 300 budgerigars into her studio, Jeffreys has documented this 'society' through still photography and video art.
The Guardian
By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore
October 19, 2019
Leila Jeffreys’ ethereal images required 300 budgies, 20kg of birdseed and painting the birds’ toenails
Jeffreys, 47, has made a career photographing birds. But her work is a far cry from nature photography. She shoots the animals, often sourced from wildlife rescue centres, zoos or individual homes in a studio, creating human-style portraits of black cockatoos, tawny owls, pink pigeons and golden finches.
The Guardian
October 18, 2019
Leila Jeffreys started photographing birds in 2008. In this series she takes the birds out of their natural habitat, and by stripping the environment back to the bare minimum and using neutral backgrounds she shows the intricacy and beauty of the feathered creatures.
The Design Files
October 17, 2019
Leila Jeffreys is celebrated for her evocative and striking portraits of owls, cockatoos, hawks, eagles and kestrels, but for her upcoming show, High Society, she has returned to a childhood favourite – the budgerigar.
Yellowtrace
October 10, 2019
Australian contemporary photographer Leila Jeffreys presents her latest nature-inspired works, ‘High Society’, the result of almost five years of planning. Having documented birds since 2008, the new exhibition revisits the world of the native Australian Budgerigar, the very subject of her first solo exhibition nine years ago. This time, Jeffrey’s worked with over 300 Budgerigars, capturing them in her signature large-format portraits and also experimenting with photographing whole flocks of birds and smaller groups within those flocks. “By presenting the birds en masse in a series of trees, I explore how nature exists in relation to humankind. The focus shifts from the individual and is instead concentrated on the flock as a single living organism,” explains Jeffreys. The concept first occurred to Jeffreys when she noticed how a flock of native Australian Budgerigars resemble leaves when perched in a tree.
Sydney Morning Herald
By Neha Kale
October 11, 2019
For Leila Jeffreys, emotional connection isn’t reserved for humans. It’s a currency that flows between creatures who share the natural world. The artist, 47, has spent the last decade taking portraits of birds, affording her avian subjects a dignity and complexity that’s as rare as it is visually distinctive. She once met a bird called Seisa, a palm cockatoo with a red cheek patch, crowned with a jaunty thatch of black feathers. The encounter changed her for good.
Australian Geographic
September 30, 2019
THE STORY OF the Australian budgerigar is one of the most striking visual statements on how humans have played a determining role in evolution. A two-coloured bird that was native to Australia and was exported to England in 1840 eventually became one of the most popular domestic pets in the world. Today the budgerigar appears in numerous colours; some of them appearing almost unnatural. Many people have come to associate the budgerigar with being pets rather than a bird that has its origins in the wild.