Intimate Bird Portraits Highlight The Refined Beauty Of Our Feathered Friends

Sydney-based artist and photographer Leila Jeffreys began her avian projects a decade ago by photographing the colorful budgerigars of her childhood memories. She takes intimate and emotional portraits of birds, including cockatoos, budgerigars, and hawks. Jeffrey’s most recent series is entitled “High Society” and marks a return to her original feathery subjects.

For High Society, Jeffreys sought to draw parallels between the communities formed by both birds and humans. “The idea came from observing flocks of birds in trees,” she explains. “From a distance, the birds are hard to distinguish, they look like leaves, but when you look up close you can see that there’s actually an entire society of birds living up there, living their own lives.” Jeffreys has built her artistic practice on highlighting the individuality of each bird within the crowd. By creating larger-than-life prints of her feathered friends, the photographer asks her audience to confront the subjects as individuals that are as unique as humans themselves.

More: Leila Jeffreys, Instagram, Facebook h/t: 121clicks