The Influence of Colour Bird Photography on Contemporary Existentialism
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| Perched Common Waxbill : Vernon Chalmers, Woodbridge Island, Cape Town |
Existentialism, as a 20th-century philosophical movement, emphasizes human freedom, authenticity, temporality, and mortality. Thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty sought to understand what it means to exist in a world without inherent meaning. Contemporary existentialism continues this tradition while integrating new aesthetic and ecological dimensions, particularly in relation to how humans perceive and represent the natural world.
Colour bird photography occupies a unique position in this dialogue between art and philosophy. Birds have long been symbols of transcendence, freedom, and temporality—qualities at the core of existential thought. When photographed in colour, birds are presented not merely as abstract forms but as beings embedded in a chromatic, temporal, and ecological reality. The iridescent plumage of a hummingbird, the migratory spectacle of flamingos, or the fragile detail of an endangered seabird’s feathers captures more than biological fact: it discloses existential moods and confronts viewers with themes of fragility, mortality, and ecological responsibility.
This essay explores how colour bird photography influences contemporary existentialism. Drawing on key existential philosophers alongside photographic theorists such as Barthes (1981), Sontag (1977), and Benjamin (2008), as well as contemporary bird photographers including Eliot Porter, Frans Lanting, and Vernon Chalmers, the essay examines existential themes of perception, freedom, temporality, mortality, authenticity, and ecological responsibility. It argues that colour bird photography has become an existential medium that not only represents avian life but also reflects and reshapes contemporary existential concerns in an age of ecological crisis.
Existentialism, Vision, and the Photographic ImageExistentialism has always been concerned with vision and perception. Heidegger (1962) described human existence as being-in-the-world, a situatedness revealed through moods and encounters. Merleau-Ponty (1962) expanded this, emphasizing embodied perception and the ways colour and form constitute lived experience. Sartre (1993), meanwhile, argued that freedom and authenticity require individuals to confront reality as it is, without illusion.
Photography, by freezing a moment, brings these existential concerns into sharp focus. For Barthes (1981), every photograph testifies to mortality—it declares, “this has been.” Black-and-white photography was long privileged as serious and existentially aligned, while colour was dismissed as commercial or sentimental (Sontag, 1977). Yet colour, particularly in nature and bird photography, aligns with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology: it presents the world as lived, in chromatic depth. Birds photographed in colour are not abstract but embodied, revealing existential themes of freedom, finitude, and ecological embeddedness.
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| Yellow-Billed Duck in Flight : Vernon Chalmers, Woodbridge Island, Cape Town |
Birds as Existential Symbols
Birds have historically symbolized freedom, transcendence, and mortality. Their flight embodies what Sartre (1993) called radical freedom—the capacity to project beyond given situations. At the same time, their fragility reminds us of finitude and ecological precarity. In existential terms, birds reflect the tension between transcendence and facticity: they soar through the sky but are subject to hunger, predation, and death.
Colour photography intensifies these symbolic dimensions. The vibrant plumage of a parrot or the iridescence of a kingfisher is not merely aesthetic but existential. These colours communicate vitality, presence, and temporality, while also underscoring fragility: feathers fade, species decline, and migratory cycles are threatened by climate change. Thus, birds in colour photography embody existential paradoxes—freedom within limits, beauty within mortality, presence within impermanence.
Phenomenology of Colour and Avian PerceptionMerleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenology emphasizes that perception is embodied and situated. Colour is not an external property but a mode of being-in-the-world. Colour bird photography aligns with this phenomenology by reproducing avian presence as it is perceived: not abstract outlines but chromatic beings.
A monochrome photograph of a flamingo might emphasize form and abstraction, but a colour photograph reveals the flamingo’s pink hues, derived from its diet, situating the bird in ecological and temporal contexts. The colour is existentially significant because it is contingent, reflecting both the bird’s freedom and its finitude. Similarly, the blues and greens of a hummingbird’s feathers are not static but shimmer with light, evoking the phenomenological immediacy of perception.
In this way, colour bird photography embodies existential phenomenology by disclosing birds as lived beings embedded in lifeworlds. It does not reduce them to essence but reveals their existence in situ.
Existentialism insists that mortality structures human existence (Heidegger, 1962). Photography testifies to temporality by freezing a moment that will never return (Barthes, 1981). Bird photography intensifies this temporality, as birds embody cycles of migration, reproduction, and death. A photograph of a migratory flock captures not only the present but also a temporal passage, a being-toward-death and renewal.
Colour deepens this existential temporality. Seasonal changes in plumage—the breeding colours of puffins, the molting of ducks, the fading of feathers—mark time visibly. A colour photograph documents these temporal shifts, situating birds within the flow of mortality. Moreover, the materiality of colour images—subject to fading and distortion—mirrors avian fragility. Just as species face extinction, so too do their photographic representations decay, reinforcing existential impermanence.
Freedom, Flight, and Existential MultiplicitySartre (1993) described human beings as condemned to freedom, responsible for creating meaning in a world without inherent essence. Birds, particularly in flight, symbolize this existential freedom. A colour photograph of a bird in flight—wings outstretched against a blue sky—captures freedom not as abstraction but as embodied existence.
Colour expands this existential symbol by multiplying interpretive possibilities. A red-winged blackbird in vivid plumage may evoke vitality, while a pale owl in twilight suggests mystery or dread. These chromatic variations mirror the multiplicity of existential freedom, resisting reduction to essence. Each colour photograph opens new moods, new interpretations, aligning with Sartre’s insistence that freedom is irreducible and open-ended.
Existential Mood and Atmosphere in Bird PhotographyHeidegger (1962) emphasized that moods (Stimmungen) reveal the world to us. Colour bird photography powerfully evokes such moods. The golden hues of migratory geese at sunset communicate awe and wonder; the stark blues of seabirds against stormy skies evoke dread and finitude.
Contemporary bird photographers such as Frans Lanting and Vernon Chalmers capture these moods with existential intensity. Lanting’s saturated colours in Life (2006) evoke awe at evolutionary continuity, while Chalmers’ bird-in-flight images reveal the freedom and fragility of existence. These works situate viewers in existential moods, disclosing being not through abstract concepts but through atmospheric encounters with avian colour and presence.
Ecological Existentialism and Bird PhotographyContemporary existentialism must confront ecological crisis. Colour bird photography contributes by documenting species decline, habitat loss, and climate change. Salgado (2013), Lanting, and Chalmers use colour to highlight both beauty and fragility, reminding viewers of responsibility for the lifeworld.
Existential freedom, as Sartre (1993) insists, entails responsibility. Colour photographs of endangered birds, such as the California condor or African penguin, confront viewers with existential choice: to deny ecological responsibility or to act authentically. The fading vibrancy of species echoes human finitude, situating ecological mortality within existential thought.
Thus, colour bird photography functions as ecological existentialism: it discloses the interconnectedness of human and avian mortality and compels responsibility for the shared world.
Case Studies- Eliot Porter
Porter pioneered colour bird photography in the mid-20th century, using dye-transfer techniques to capture avian hues with fidelity. His work revealed birds as existential beings—fragile, vibrant, temporal. Porter’s colour images aligned with phenomenological authenticity, affirming nature in its lived richness.
- Frans Lanting
Lanting’s Life (2006) situates birds within evolutionary and ecological narratives. His saturated colour palettes evoke existential moods of awe, finitude, and responsibility. His work emphasizes ecological existentialism, confronting viewers with mortality across species.
- Vernon Chalmers
Chalmers’ contemporary bird-in-flight colour photography emphasizes existential themes of freedom, temporality, and presence. His images situate birds within atmospheric moods, aligning with Heideggerian Stimmung and Sartrean authenticity. Chalmers’ existential engagement with avian photography underscores the philosophical potential of contemporary practice.
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| Little Egret in Flight : Vernon Chalmers, Woodbridge Island, Cape Town |
While colour bird photography deepens existential reflection, it also risks inauthenticity. Saturated images may aestheticize ecological crisis, transforming extinction into spectacle (Baudrillard, 1994). This aligns with Sartre’s (1993) notion of bad faith: fleeing responsibility by masking reality in aesthetic pleasure.
Authentic engagement requires resisting this illusion. Colour must be used not to obscure but to reveal existential truth—the fragility of birds, the temporality of ecosystems, the responsibility of human freedom.
ConclusionColour bird photography profoundly influences contemporary existentialism by situating existential themes within avian life. Through colour, it embodies Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, Heidegger’s Stimmung, Sartre’s freedom and authenticity, and Beauvoir’s ethics of responsibility. It discloses temporality and mortality in avian cycles, evokes existential moods through atmosphere, and expands existential freedom through interpretive multiplicity.
Most importantly, colour bird photography connects existentialism to ecological responsibility. Birds, in their vibrancy and fragility, reveal the interconnectedness of human and non-human mortality. By documenting their existence in colour, photographers compel viewers to confront not only human finitude but also the fragility of the shared lifeworld.
In this way, colour bird photography does more than reflect existentialism: it transforms it, expanding contemporary existential thought into ecological and phenomenological dimensions. It reminds us that existence, like the flight of birds, is fleeting, fragile, and vibrantly free.
ReferencesBarthes, R. (1981). Camera lucida: Reflections on photography (R. Howard, Trans.). Hill and Wang.
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation (S. F. Glaser, Trans.). University of Michigan Press.
Benjamin, W. (2008). The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media (M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty, & T. Y. Levin, Eds.). Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1936)
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row. (Original work published 1927)
Lanting, F. (2006). Life: A journey through time. Taschen.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C. Smith, Trans.). Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Porter, E. (1962). Birds of North America: A personal selection. Houghton Mifflin.
Salgado, S. (2013). Genesis. Taschen.
Sartre, J.-P. (1993). Being and nothingness (H. E. Barnes, Trans.). Washington Square Press. (Original work published 1943)
Sontag, S. (1977). On photography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.