Experimental 2nd place winner

“Falling” is a visual analogy of a 2021 study by Callaghana, Nakagawab and Cornwell that concluded there to be an estimated 50 billion wild birds on this planet. That is six birds per human. Some have a surprisingly optimistic reaction to this revelation. However, it is worth comparing the data to a similar study by Glaston and Blackburn from 1997, which calculated there to be between 200 and 400 billion individual birds. At the time, that equated to approximately 60 birds per human at the high end. One might argue that the human population has increased in that timeframe and would impact the bird-to-human ratio, as I did. However, calculations reveal an astounding correlation between human population growth of 25% from six to eight billion between 1997 and 2021, and the decline in bird numbers of 75% from 200 to 50 billion in the same timeframe!
Each taxidermy bird in this experimental photo series has been hand-crafted by me personally and paired with foliage congruent with its natural habitat – which is of course disappearing first. These suspended mobiles were captured using slow-sync flash, harnessing movement from the mobile, photographer, and zoom lens for creative effect.

Natalie Field (1982) is a multi-disciplinary artist from South Africa currently researching living materials as medium for her Master’s in Fine Art at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway.

With a B.Tech Photography Cum Laude from the Nelson Mandela University (Port Elizabeth, ZA, 2008), the artist participated in several group exhibitions in Port Elizabeth before relocating to Johannesburg in 2011. Field attended her first artist residency at the Arteles Creative Center in Finland in 2016, culminating in Human.Nature, her first solo show with Berman Contemporary in 2018. The artist went on to exhibit with the gallery at the START Art Fair in London in 2019. Field has also received several awards, most recently winning Gold for her series The Hole in your Soul in the Photo-Manipulation Category of the Fine Art Photography Awards, 2021.

Since her move to Europe in 2021, Field has exhibited at Shapes of Living: Living Earth at the Italgas Heritage Lab in Turin, Italy; and K-U-K (Kjøpmannsgata Ung Kunst) in Trondheim, Norway. Most recently she attended a summer workshop at Rejmyre Art Lab in Sweden.