Artist Statement

I am an American fine art photographer who lives part-time in Central Mexico, where my work grows out of a simple daily practice: paying attention to the birds that share this landscape with me.

I did not come to this work through expeditions or rare sightings. My subjects are the ones outside my door — a Great Kiskadee calling from a bare branch, a Streak-backed Oriole gathering nesting material, a Blue Mockingbird catching the last light of evening. What draws me to them is not novelty but familiarity, deepened over two years, into something that feels closer to portraiture than documentation.

My photographs favor natural, directional light — often backlit, often set against dark, uncluttered backgrounds that let the subject hold the frame. I'm drawn to stillness: a puffed feather, a tilted head, a single sustained gaze. I want the viewer to slow down the way I had to slow down to make the image — to spend real time with a creature most people only glimpse in passing.

Living as an American part-time in Central Mexico has also given this work a second purpose. Many of the birds I photograph daily are ones that visitors, tourists, and photographers elsewhere in North America rarely get to see up close, if at all. I see my role, in part, as a bridge — bringing sustained, patient attention to a biodiversity that deserves more of it and sharing it with audiences on both sides of the border who might not otherwise encounter it.

This body of work is ongoing. Each photograph is one entry in what I hope becomes a larger record — of a place, a practice, and the birds that made me look closer.

— Tulasi Zimmer