Bird Scandal in the Garden

Clara de Tezanos (b.1986), guatemalan artist. Her photobooks shortlisted for Paris Photo, Arles & PhotoEspaña. Last solo shows at Galerie La La Lande, Galería Rebelde and collective show at Casa Wabi and HangarY.

Scandal of Birds in the Garden

I seek the experience of the sacred through light, exploring it through its phenomenology, scientific properties, and metaphorical reach. My intention is to prolong the experience of twilight through a repertoire of investigative instruments where light enters into dialogue with time. Inspired by the solar cycle, the agitation of birds at sunset appears as a poetic response to the dying light—translating the ephemeral and the eternal into a natural state of consciousness. In this fleeting moment, the sun descends and conceals itself, preparing for a new tomorrow, accompanied by a glorious scandal of birds.

These installations—activated by the sun itself—function as sundials, painting and questioning our relationship with the present. The use of analog photography, objets trouvés, natural resources, and nearly forgotten tools of ancient photographic craftsmanship reveals the visible, the intangible, and the present that slips away. Each piece becomes a solar amulet, awakening a nostalgia for the analog era, yet transcending it by articulating a metaphorical language: that which is seen and recorded, that which is unseen but recorded, and that which is seen yet escapes capture.

These are time machines—poetic fossils, alphabets of secrets, metaphors of the passage of time, and perhaps even premonitions. They merge past, present, and future in a testimony to memory, to the transgenerational, and to the relics that silently construct our architecture of being. Each image reflects the fragility of the life cycle, capturing emotions tied to its constant transformation. In this luminous ritual, the act of seeing becomes an act of remembrance.

My photographic work adopts an ecological and non-traditional approach to photography. Rather than simply capturing a moment within a frame, I question the very act of taking a photograph. My approach involves abstracting moments through compositions that incorporate the relics and tools of analog photography. These pieces engage with the material history of the medium and explore it from multiple perspectives.

In my installations, I reuse vintage photographic equipment—lenses, suitcases, sundials, and other artifacts—giving them a second life in sculptural compositions that reflect on life cycles, generational transmission, and inheritance. This way of working constitutes what I call a “photographic ecology,” one that embraces the medium’s errors—such as light leaks—and elevates them into aesthetic gestures, like abstract brushstrokes that reveal the fragility and beauty of the image itself.

In Scandal of Birds in the Garden, for instance, I recreate a fleeting moment at dusk when birds begin to sing, documenting sound and atmosphere through a practice that resists the urge to “capture.” Instead, I suggest an expanded way of perceiving photography—one that turns away from the decisive moment and toward reverence, memory, and transformation.