Ornithographies is a photographic project by Spanish artist Xavi Bou that captures the invisible geometries of bird flight. Rather than freezing a single instant, Bou uses high-speed digital compositing to trace the movement of flocks through time, transforming their trajectories into continuous, calligraphic forms that reveal the choreography of the sky.
Bou, trained in geology and photography, was inspired by childhood walks with his grandfather in the wetlands of Catalonia. His work bridges art and science, using motion-tracking techniques to make time visible. Each image compresses hundreds of moments into one frame, showing arcs, spirals, and waves that resemble drawings or musical notation. The birds’ collective motion becomes a kind of sky-script, an abstract record of life in motion.
Ornithographies transforms migration and flight into a visual language that collapses seconds into shape. It extends the lineage of photographic experimentation into the ecological sublime, reminding us that the air itself is a living medium, inscribed every day with patterns too vast or fleeting for the eye to see.
Images from Xavi Bou.
