The big picture: Tim Flach’s angry bird

A popular state bird and sports team mascot in the US, the male northern cardinal is a territorial creature known for the fervour with which it attacks its own reflection. (Not for nothing is it a model for the hot-headed Red in the Angry Birds franchise.) In Flach’s image, which features in a new book about bird photography entitled Aviary, the cardinal eyeballs the viewer as though preparing for a full-blown assault. The effect, at once comic and intimidatory, is heightened by its punkish red crest.

In reality, the 2021 photoshoot in Flach’s east London studio, using a bird from a private owner, was a peaceable affair. “I made an aviary where the bird couldn’t see me, but I could light it,” says Flach. “I had a turntable to put it on and it seemed quite happy to go around in circles until the angle was perfect.” He used a long lens so that the bird wouldn’t register his presence as he photographed it. “The crest usually lies flat but will activate in response to a sound or activity; I think we played some birdsong to get it interested.”

Flach doesn’t downplay the anthropomorphic qualities of his work. On the contrary, he believes that making animals more “relatable” in human terms, however distorting it may be of their actual characteristics, helps us engage more strongly with them and their plight. “I certainly feel that evoking empathy makes us act towards pro-environmental outcomes,” he says. “And for empathy to happen towards animals, we must better imagine ourselves in their space. If we don’t imagine it,” he adds, “then I don’t know if humanity has much of a future.” 

Aviary: The Bird in Contemporary Photography by Danaé Panchaud and William A Ewing is published by Thames & Hudson on 11 September

Photograph by Tim Flach