Ringed Turtle Dove, Oakland Zoo 1986

Volker Seding took this photograph called 'Ringed Turtle Dove, Oakland Zoo.' I’m curious what the artist was thinking when he composed this image. He’s captured the wild world in captivity and it makes me question my sense of freedom as an artist. The image is very still, but also bursting with life, it reminds me of a Dutch still life, but one that’s bursting out of its frame. I can imagine Seding was thinking about the tension between nature and artifice. Perhaps he was thinking of the many philosophical and creative problems we face when trying to capture the world around us, when trying to put things into boxes, or frames, both literally and figuratively. What is freedom, what is constraint? What is the relationship between the artist and the artwork, the observer and the observed?