First edition of Heart of a Bird by Constance Thalken (2025)

First impression 

Large format hardback in new condition 

30x24cm

80 pages

About

In 1988, Constance Thalken began a five year journey photographing small communities in remote regions of the southeastern United States, from the Gulf Coast of Texas into Florida. She moved through landscapes shaped by water and heat, where human presence is provisional and the natural world remains dominant. These are places governed by older rhythms, where an ancient world persists just beyond view.

Heart of a Bird examines the negotiation between people and the natural world, sometimes reverent, sometimes violently adversarial. This tension is most visible in Louisiana during the annual alligator harvest. Native to the marshlands of the southeastern coast, alligators have remained largely unchanged for millions of years, primordial presences holding fast as America evolves around them. Feared, hunted, regulated, mythologised, and commodified, they move between threat and resource, warning and attraction. In that resistance, the alligator becomes a measure of the society built around it.