High Society is the culmination of work over five years. What began with a moment of noticing how a flock of parrots perched in a tree resembling leaves, grew into a visual inquiry into nature, society, and interdependence. The planning and preparation required to select and work with tame budgerigars in a studio took many years, as care was central to the process.
In this body of work, my focus shifted from individuals to the collective organism of the flock. Alongside the flock, I also created single portraits, as well as images of couples and small groups, to reveal the intimate societies that exist within the larger whole. This was something I had not attempted in my earlier work and became a new evolution in learning how to capture family groups.
Working with 300 birds en masse in a studio, I wanted to conjure a world where nature itself is social and where survival is contingent upon connection. Trees, branches, and flocks become environments and citizens in a single ecosystem.
This work is a reminder of reciprocity, that we depend on the more than human world as much as it depends on us. High Society invites us to reflect on what we owe and what we might preserve for other societies beyond our own.
