LOMBARDI ARTIST STATEMENT

How might extinction flatten our memory of birds? North America has lost three billion birds since 1970 so total extinction is imaginable, if unpleasant. Recently, wallowing in a gloomy mood, I imagined how humanity might remember birds a few thousand years after their extinction. 

These cyanotype photographs depict  birds being held at banding stations. After being weighed, measured, and banded, the researchers hold each bird reverently before releasing it. In those moments, focusing on cupped hands, the science all felt spiritual, if not fully religious. 

Since dinosaurs are long extinct most of us lump them all into the same taxonomic box: Clade Dinosauria. Most of us do not remember more than a few broad categories of them. Unless you are a birder–in that case you might remember that one group of dinosaurs is not entirely extinct, Ornithurae, yet. 

From there, it is a few flighty hops of imagination to pretend that in a few thousand years, if birds go extinct, humanity might not remember them very accurately. We might even lump them into one crude category like dinosauria or ornithurae. Without fossils, people might rely on archeological texts, like these photographs, to study them

I started volunteering at bird banding stations in 2021. Mostly, I stuck to learning the fickle techniques of bird handling and aging. On occasion, however, during a slow moment, I took a picture and let my mind wander. What if you found these photographs a few thousand years from now? How would you interpret their meaning? Perhaps you would think they depict a kind of religion…