Have you ever met a true birder? Someone that is really, really, REALLY into birdwatching? Do you know what a life-list is? And try this on for size: for the truly seasoned birders, most of what they "see" is seen with their ears, not with their eyes, meaning that what one learns to do crouching down into the woods early in the morning for hours and hours of every new dawn is to listen to the birds, get to know them through their various calls and songs, so that even if they're not visible, you'll get to know which ones are there, singing or calling to one another in trees or bushes around you, maddeningly hiding themselves from your direct line of sight.

All of this to is to say that I have a particular sympathy for what 20x200 artist Paula McCartney says drove her to create her body of work, Birdwatching:

This project came about from long walks in the woods when I would stop to look at the birds, but was always frustrated by the fact that they would be too far away, or moving about too quickly. I was interested in photographing them, but they would never land in an appropriate composition.

I decided to take control, buy my own birds, and create and photograph these idealized scenes that I fantasized about, where songbirds perched patiently on trees as I moved through the woods.

Rather than only recording what nature has to offer, I have taken control and adorned the trees with their longed for, but absent, tenants.

American Goldfinches by Paula McCartney

Since 2003, Paula McCartney has been creating a world where the birds sit still for her camera, come when called, and show themselves when asked. The project is a deliberately constructed theater as well as a kind of conceptual landscape photography, and through it she has managed to create a world that even the most die-hard naturalist would envy. What I'm most touched by in viewing these images is that the artifice has become an intrinsic piece of the art itself: she isn't trying to trick you into thinking that these are anything but craft-store bought fake birds. An even more subtle "inside" joke are her captions that from scene to scene mix real life species with some more fancifully made up common names that are just close enough to real North American Birds to sound legit to the non-birder ear. These images are made with a tender humor, as well as an honest appreciation for what it really takes to be someone who learns to see the seemingly invisible in the natural world.

Princeton Architectural Press has just published Paula's first monograph, Bird Watching, featuring essays by HHS! panelist and founding member of Radius Books Darius Himes and Karen Irvine, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. The book is truly that rare object which serves up an extra-something-special not immediately available for consumption on the gallery walls:

Black-capped Chickadee, September 2006 by Paula McCartney

Untitled, from Birdwatching by Paula McCartney

Paula McCartney's show Birdwatching opens this Thursday, March 4th at the KLOMPCHING Gallery, with an artist's reception tomorrow, March 3rd from 6-8 p.m. This Saturday, March 6th, Paula will be in conversation with Darius, from 1-2 p.m., also at KLOMPCHING gallery.

KLOMPCHING Gallery
111 Front Street, Suite 206
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Telephone: 212.796.2070

Snowfall #6 by Paula McCartney

Just a handful of prints from Paula's 20x200 edition remain (which incidentally have nothing to do with birds, but are from her beautiful new series of work A Field Guide to Snow and Ice)—I made sure to get mine during the last sale, did you?