Columbarium The Bird Man of Brooklyn

Spellbound by the challenges and perils of globalization, we sometimes forget the intricate universes hidden in the local everyday, worlds that yield themselves only to careful and patient observation. Somewhere on a rooftop in Brooklyn, an old man breeds pigeons, feeding and flying them. It is an unspectacular, seemingly banal scene, but it is one that photographer Marianne Muller spent months observing. The results are ravishing images, evocatively symbolical and dense, of the birds, their flight, and the sky above Brooklyn. Precise, condensed observations alternate with almost abstract compositions in which the birds' flight is transformed into calligraphic brushstrokes on the clouds above New York. Columbarium is a book both about the city and about nature, about one tiny place and the aesthetic universe it holds. The artist's images are complemented by an interview with the Bird Man, providing an illuminating contrast that will inspire reflections on the nature of what the pictures themselves depict.