Luke Stephenson: An Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds

"It all started very innocently I suppose, but then it gradually turned into an obsession ...." The first inkling of this obsession came when British photographer Luke Stephenson (born 1983) met an artist who photographed pigeons--side on, against a blank background. Impressed by the simplicity of these images, Stephenson began to photograph birds. His first subjects belonged to the treasurer of the UK Budgie Society, who deemed his portraits "crap" because he had omitted the legs and tails. He subsequently developed an eye for the nuances of bird photography, and, making a specialty of photographing show birds of all kinds, developed the body of work gathered in this volume. While Stephenson's photographs depict these birds with apparent neutrality (against a variety of colored backgrounds), Michael Smith observes in his foreword to this volume that "they live in an overlap between the natural and manmade worlds, and say as much about the culture that created them as they do about nature."