About The Birdwatcher
This book is in an edition of 8 and opens to 30x40 inches. Each book includes a unique bird illustration by Silvana Ospina Cardona. Bird photographs are by Jose Hernandez Castano, Aidan van Coller, and Ian van Coller. All other photos by Ian van Coller. Design, layout and printing by Ian van Coller. Book binding by Rory Sparks.
The Birdwatcher
by Ian van Coller
I was raised in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg, a place of privilege, protected from the political turmoil of South Africa during the last decades of apartheid. My mother was a passionate gardener, and I spent my days playing in a suburban oasis. Birds were everywhere—Crested Barbet, Amethyst Sunbird, African Paradise Flycatcher, Hadeda Ibis, and so many more. As I roamed that small paradise with my Minolta camera and zoom lens, searching out the many species, I dreamed of becoming a wildlife photographer for National Geographic and traveling to the most remote jungles of Borneo or the Amazon.
Gradually I grew to understand the political and economic realities that the majority of South Africans faced, while continuing to find solace in the natural world that I was fortunate enough to experience. My connection to the African landscape was deepened by many family camping trips to parks in Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and even distant Tanzania.
The landscape of my childhood is gone now, replaced by multi-million-dollar mansions amid the sprawl of urbanization. And I became a different kind of photographer. As the planet faces an impending climate catastrophe, I again seek solace in nature, responding to my despair at the coming loss of natural wonders that remain.
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I had fantasized about visiting Colombia since first seeing photographs of an Andean Cock-of-the-Rock in the pages of National Geographic, so long ago. One of the most biodiverse countries in the world, Colombia has also had a reputation for danger (which may have added to its mystique). For more than fifty years, the people of Colombia have suffered the consequences of a low-intensity armed conflict between government troops, leftist guerrillas, and right-wing paramilitaries. Ironically, one of the reasons that so much cloud forest remains is that farmers and loggers abandoned large areas during the prolonged conflict. With a truce in place, human encroachment once again endangers the forests, as humans struggle to survive in a modern economy.
Colombia is home to more bird species than any other country—currently 1,958, almost 20 percent of all the species found on earth. Through the specimen windows in these pages (meant to evoke Victorian curiosity cabinets, but also travel brochures and the viewing field of a spotting scope) you can see a multitude of both the common and the endangered, birds that prosper in cultivated gardens and those that survive only at the highest elevations of untouched forest. The trajectory through these pages roughly follows my journey, from gardens, over kikuyu-covered pastures, to the tops of cloud forests draped in mist, and back down to the city edge where people and nature meet.
The Birdwatcher is an offering of joy in defense of nature, a journey of self-reflection viewed through the wondrous landscapes of the central and western Andes of Colombia and the astounding birds that live there. It is made from my vantage as a tourist as well as an artist, a photographer and an amateur birdwatcher, long fascinated by the imagination of what I would find in this place of my dreams.