A jumbled mess of electrical wires brought Nicolas St-Pierre to the topic of birds—or rather the lack of them. A knot of wires is the antithesis of the image that nearly every photographer makes at some point: that of birds sitting prettily on a wire. St-Pierre found himself confronted by a question that stuck with him throughout his years in Japan: where have the birds gone?
Upon closer inspection, the birds are or have been there, hints of their presence scattered throughout St-Pierre’s images. Opening with a single bird taking flight, as if some kind of omen, the series unfolds; a pair of bizarre part-bird, part-man figures in metallic suits appear, a mountain motif reframed as wings behind a sleeping woman. The birds seem to haunt, even taunt, St-Pierre’s images.
In striking black and white, St-Pierre leads us through a landscape filled with the uncanny. With a background as a diplomat and reporter, his eye is attuned to taking in the new. Preparing for a four year diplomatic posting in Japan, he studied the language and culture but still found himself unprepared for the particular form of alienation he encountered during his time there.
Photography thus became a way to take it all in. “The camera is an extraordinary tool that helps me step out of my comfort zone. It provides me with an excuse and an incentive to get closer, to connect emotionally and physically with the outside world. It has become a means to dive deep into myself and express my own feelings and state of mind,” he says.
Wandering the streets of Tokyo, St-Pierre was continually struck by the uncanny. A woman behind a cat-like mask grabs our attention like a moth to a flame, but on second glance, we see she is not alone; a masked man appears in the reflection behind her. A pair of feet disappear into a sculptural boulder. A faceless train operator, leaning out of a window, seems to be conducting our journey through the unknown.
Only towards the end of his time in Japan did St-Pierre realize he had a project. “The title naturally imposed itself as the perfect metaphor for how I had felt all those years, living in a country that I liked but that would never be fully home to me.” Reflecting on his time spent photographing, he says: “almost every day, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the unexpected sight of something that did not belong to the scene or the deafening silence of something that cried out to be there.” And so the series ends as it begins, with a bird leaving a trace, inviting us to continue on this strange journey, searching for where they’ve gone.
Editor’s note: We discovered Where Have the Birds Gone? in this year’s LensCulture Black & White Awards. For more powerful monochrome work, check out the rest of the winners.