Samantha Stroman
Gronau, Germany
warm-tone silver gelatin print
These images were taken in an abandoned factory. Hunting around this wasteland of broken glass and graffiti, I discovered it was virtually littered with the carcasses of birds. Gathering them up, I placed them in rough chronological order: nine birds, starting with the “freshest” and ending with the most decomposed—the bare remnants of a rib cage. They speak of ritual as well as death and decay and all the symbology that cannot be detached from an image of a bird. There is something of the phoenix in these, an honour of death as well as rebirth as something new.