Bateleur Eagle, St. Louis Zoological Park 13 - 1987

Volker Seding made this photograph of a Bateleur Eagle at St. Louis Zoo. I can imagine Seding, walking up to this scene. What grabbed him? Was it the light from above? Or the contrast between the outside and inside? The natural and the artificial? The beige of the walls contrasting with the dark bird? The textures of the branches against those flat, flat walls. The eagle in the photograph is perched high, almost like it's meditating, with its head cocked at an angle. You can feel the stillness, a moment captured in a manufactured environment. It’s as though Seding wanted to show us the zoo as a kind of stage. He invites us to think about how we see the world, and the artificial situations we create to view nature. How does it reflect our relationship with the natural world? What does the act of observing do to the observed?