Bateleur Eagle, St. Louis Zoological Park 13 - 1987

Volker Seding made this photograph, Bateleur Eagle, St. Louis Zoological Park, with his camera; a dance of light and shadow recorded on film. The palette is muted, almost bleached, reinforcing the unsettling sense of captivity. The image presents a stage set: a bare tree, a nest, and the dark bird perched atop, all contained within a stark enclosure. The surface is smooth, the tones cool. There’s a clinical detachment, a sense of observation rather than immersion. My eye keeps returning to the contrast between the organic forms of the tree and the rigid geometry of the cage. It's as if the artist is questioning what it means to be "natural" when framed by the artificial. It reminds me a little of Thomas Struth’s museum photographs, where the act of looking becomes part of the subject. It’s a reminder that art, like life, is often about the spaces we inhabit and the perspectives we adopt, leaving us to wonder about the unseen bars that confine us all.