A Sensitive Education explores, through the figure of bird educator Tristan Plot, the possibilities of empathy between different natural species. The narrative, far from being a naturalist documentation, is rather focused on the emotional sphere and sensitivity of birds and humans. The photographic research develops in resonance with the delicacy of this wordless dialogue.
Tristan is a bird educator specialist in soft methods. He prepares birds for participation in theatre and dance performances or film documentaries. He also works on the new concept of ornitotherapy and mediation through the animal, creating contact between birds and people with disabilities, the elderly, prisoners, in order to promote new sensations and create a deep reconciliation between birds and humans.
When he was a child, in the forest behind his parents’ house in the Touraine, Tristan noticed that, if he remained still for a long time, the animals came out of the vegetation and it was possible to observe them. Even today, this practice of slow approach, respecting the rhythm of nature, remains essential to his educational method.
Having studied ecology, biology and ethology at the university, he developed an educational technique at the intersection of imprinting, traditional training and positive training. His method is a set of observation and predisposition of mind in harmony with the environment, according to the sensitivity of the other and in relation to expression and behavior codes which are different from the human ones.
Tristan, through the intuition of animality as something delicate, subtle and minimal, defines the relationship with birds as an exclusive bond able to reconcile the rhythm of the species with the individual one. His research is based on the understanding of the sensitivity of birds and aims to recover that ability, which got lost over the course of evolution, of perceiving the minimal variations and micro movements that are the expressive world of animals.
France, 2017/2019
Publications and Interviews:
British Journal of Photography by Frankie Lister-Fell
Pellicola Magazine by Anna Bulgarelli
Vogue by Francesca Marani
Domus by Raffaele Vertaldi
Fisheye Magazine by Eric Karsenty
Tending to the Garden by Matthew Dunne
Rolling Stone Italia by Francesca Orsi
Zadig Magazine
Dlui di Repubblica
Marie Claire Italia
Selected exhibitions:
Circulation(s) Paris
Cortona on the Move
PVF Helsinki
ARCOOP wall project Geneve
Les Boutographies (projection)
Les Nuits de Pierrevert
BYOPaper! Les Rencontres d’Arles
Officine Fotografiche Milano
The book A Sensitive Education was released in January 2020 by the independent publishing house Départ Pour l’Image, of which the author is co-founder.
A Sensitive Education, Départ Pour l’Image editions, 2020
Book details:
112 pages
148x210 mm
Hard Cover
4-color offset with UV
Fedrigoni Woodstock, Fedrigoni Arcoset, Surbalin Glatt
First Edition 300: January 2020
Second Edition 500: May 2021
ISBN 978 88 944622 2 7
www.departpourlimage.com