Tristan_A Sensitive Education

Dates

2017 - 2019
Author

Francesca Todde
Location France, France
Recognition

Main Prize Shortlist - PhMuseum 2020 Photography Grant

“Yet it can happen, suddenly, unexpectedly, and most frequently in the half-light-of-glimpses, that we catch sight of another visible order which intersects with ours and has nothing to do with it.[…] We come upon a part of the visible which wasn’t destined for us. Perhaps it was destined for night-birds, reindeer, ferrets, eels, whales…” John Berger

Tristan Plot is a bird educator; he prepares them to work with human beings in theatrical and dance shows or film documentaries and develops with them some “ornithotherapy” sessions with prisoners and people in distress. 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. Since he 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 behaviour 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.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Tristan and the barn owl Boubo during a rehearsal at 104 in Paris. Boubo worked with Bayo in the show "La Rive dans le Noir" by Pascal Quignard and Marie Vialle. About this show Tristan says: “I like it when the relationship fragility remains visible on the stage: the balance between work and play without control. The viewer is touched by this fragility, because it discloses that we are with emotionally complex beings, not machines.”

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The ring-necked parakeet Belle-Bete. Belle-bête emits very strong cries, which make the approach complicated, but she also has a very affectionate character and she enjoys getting on the arm of strangers climbing it up to the shoulder. She likes being scratched behind her neck and this causes an involuntary emotional reaction that causes her to dilate and narrow her iris.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Tristan goes with a transport cage into the woods behind his house, where he has installed large aviaries of wood and net that blend in with the trees.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Mildred, white stork, considers Tristan her partner. She perceives the other females, no matter the species, as competitors for her role next to Tristan. Mildred built the nest on the roof of the house of Tristan and she greets him every time she sees him leaning back her head up to touch the back and beating rhythmically her beak, according to the courting ritual of storks.

© Francesca Todde - The white stork Mildred in the woods behind Tristan's house.

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The white stork Mildred in the woods behind Tristan's house.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The swans worked in a theatrical show for the general public in Paris but after the terrorist attacks in November 2015, because of the dramatic drop in tourism, their show was canceled and since then, they have been living in a pond of Tristan’s friend, who goes and visit them daily.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Bayo knows Tristan better than anybody else, they have been together since he was born, 15 years ago, and together they worked on more than 300 shows. “I cannot say that it is some sort of telepathy, but there are certainly some communications with animals that, as they do not pass through words, they find other ways. In my view, getting in touch with a bird is like a kind of meditation: I am in the present moment, willing to listen and open to the proposal of the other. When I work this way, for example with Bayo, I hardly need to demand a request, everything goes through a connection between me and him.”

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The crow Bayo has a lofty individuality: when he walks on the ground he looks like a bully boy with his hands in his pockets, when he is tired and he wants to go home he opens the door of the crate himself, kicking it with his foot. Bayo has a different odour from the other birds, he smells of earth and ink. His name comes from the French way of saying "Bayer aux corneilles", that is to say to yawn at crows, to be uselessly staring at the sky.

© Francesca Todde - The white stork Mildred returns to her nest on the roof of Tristan's house, with branches in her beak.

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The white stork Mildred returns to her nest on the roof of Tristan's house, with branches in her beak.

© Francesca Todde - One of Mildred's unfertilized eggs, sometimes happens to fall out of the nest.

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One of Mildred's unfertilized eggs, sometimes happens to fall out of the nest.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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A dead bird found in the village by one of Tristan's friends; in the relationship with birds we have to deal with a shorter lifespan than ours, and therefore with the idea of loss.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Tristan and Mildred look at each other through the windows of Tristan's future bedroom, in the new house still under construction. Despite the strong attachment to Tristan, Mildred has so far refused the invitation to move house with him, heedless of Tristan's efforts to build a new nest and move her eggs. Each time, she flew back to the old house, forcing him to go and retrieve her in the most disparate ways and complicating their ménage more than a little.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The yellow plumage of Belle-bête is an anomaly in the world of ring-necked parakeets, which are usually green and blue. She lives together with two cockatiels, with which she has fluctuating dominance relationships.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Details of the new house, a rose from the garden on the kitchen table. Tristan has built his new house on his own, with the help of a friend who works on eco-compatible buildings, using ecological and recycled materials.

© Francesca Todde - A rehearsal session with pigeons at the Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris.

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A rehearsal session with pigeons at the Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Inside the caravan in which Tristan lived for a year. The Paris events had a strong impact on Tristan’s professional and personal life, who found himself forced to lay off his workers and shut down the company. Tristan found himself burdened with debts and without a salary, he lived for a year in a trailer thanks to a friend who hosted him on land he owned going back and forth every day to feed the birds remaining in the woods behind the old house.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The pigeons live all together in a large aviary, there is, among them, a strong group hierarchy, although some dominant relationships vary over time as well as the sexual orientations of individuals. Every morning the pigeons wait in line to step on Tristan's precision scale ; this is a necessary ritual because each bird has a "flying weight", over which it is too heavy and it has no more impulse to fly, and under which it may be too weak or sick to fly. When an individual falls ill, it must be immediately moved away from the group to prevent a possible infection. Tristan takes note of the weight of all the birds and he compares it with previous measurements to set the quantity of food needed for the day.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The golden back of the barn owl Boubo. The barn owl is a nocturnal bird of prey, one of its characteristics is the silent flight, given by a particular structure of the wings that absorbs friction with air. The barn owl emits a sound similar to a human breath, which, together with its silent appearance in the night and the ghostly whiteness of its plumage, gave rise to its French name "Chouette effraie”, the scary owl.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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The starling Firmin. The plumage of the starlings changes radically according to the season, in spring and summer, that is during the nuptial period, it is iridescent with green and violet reflections. Some colors of bird liveries are due to pigmentation (melanin), some others to light refraction phenomena (such as iridescence). The sight of birds, unlike ours, can perceive UV rays, so in many cases we can only have a rough idea of how actually birds see each other. The starlings have a complex collective intelligence, which makes them move in large clouds in the sky as a single organism, but they also have a strong individuality; Tristan works with them in the "mediating through the animal" sessions with the inmates of Poitiers prison.

© Francesca Todde - Image from the Tristan_A Sensitive Education photography project

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Tristan has today a professional setting as a "entertainment worker " for the preparation of birds, he built with the help of some friends the house where he lives with his new partner, and also the aviaries which took place in the woods next to the new house, have been enlarged and their security enhanced. He is now planting new trees in order to make the living environment of the birds stimulating and not boring.