Murmurations

work in progress

Murmurations is an evolving photographic work devoted to gatherings of starlings in the marshes of the Cotentin.

Through these shifting formations, it explores the possibility of representing collective movement in constant transformation.

_{*murmuration, n.:

a large gathering of birds in flight; a cloud of birds.

Project dossier PDF / FR ︎︎︎}

At the hour when daylight withdraws,
something gathers.

At first, almost nothing.
A few points in the sky,
scattered trajectories.
Then the movements draw closer,
attune to one another, come apart.
A form appears without having been decided.
It folds, stretches, turns,
already disappearing into the one that follows.

No one leads.
Each receives from the other.

Then movement circulates like a rumour,
an unease, a breath.
Multiplicity becomes matter.
A presence made of thousands of individuals,
attentive to itself and impossible to grasp.

In the sky above the marshes,
forms do not remain.
They come into being.

What remains is to try to hold on to something,
not the instant, but its vibration;
not the form, but what moves through it.

What takes shape between beings.
What passes.
What lingers for a moment longer.

And what, always, escapes.

_{Dan Ramaën}