On his website, the photographer nicknamed this project “black sun”. It's easy to understand the reason for this name: saturated with a myriad of black dots, the photos represent a sky streaked with captivating shapes, which elegantly adorn the landscape.
Article originally published in December 2023
The glaring paradoxes of murmurings
Above all, it is nostalgia that guides the photographer's steps towards the lands of his childhood, in the south of Denmark. There, a million starlings gather in spring and fall, before migrating. “The countless birds gather in great murmurations before settling collectively in the reeds at nightfall”explains Søren Solkær. Freezing these moving clouds, the photographer gives a taste of eternity to the ephemeral groupings of starlings.
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It is in this season that starlings engage in this hypnotizing phenomenon, which reminds the Danish photographer of both “calligraphies”, black brush drawings and an almost geometric aesthetic, with shapes seeming to respond to mathematical laws “written on the horizon”. A ballet teeming with life to fight against death, the paradox is therefore present in the content and in the form: “From geometry to organic, from solid to fluid, from matter to ethereal, from reality to dream”.
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Flocks of birds, an aesthetic, dreamlike and athletic phenomenon
The starling is a particularly sociable bird. It lives in groups most of the year, with the exception of the breeding season. The reason for these groupings? The survival instinct. It is in fact a defense strategy against potential predators: birds of prey such as buzzards, hawks, etc. breaking the cloud of harmony and cohesion, aerial attacks sow violence and chaos within the swarms. dreamlike.
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Researchers from the University of Rome La Sapienza have demonstrated two types of behavioral reactions between starlings: attraction and alignment, hence their rapid and consistent movements. There is no leader, the size or shape of the swarm has no impact. Each starling reacts to the behavior of its seven closest neighbors, producing a ripple effect through the mass. These clouds would therefore make it easier to collect information, transmitted and retransmitted by the group.
The release of “Starling” by Søren Solkær (starling in English), a collection of photographs dedicated to murmurations, his second after Black Sun, is scheduled for December 26. Solkær's images are also on display at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle until March 10, 2024.
Sources: Bird Escape, Søren Solkær, Live Science
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