'A fragment of eternity': the mesmerising murmurations of Europe's starlings

Photographer S?ren Solkaer has spent hundreds of nights capturing the astonishing patterns made by birds he first saw in his native DenmarkS?ren Solkaer was 10 when he witnessed his first starling murmuration, on the west coast of Denmark: more than 100,000 birds, making movies in the sky as they were being corralled by a falcon. It would be nearly 40 years before the photographer, best known for intimate, often playful portraits of artists and musicians, would revisit this scene of his youth, setting aside a week to capture the birds in motion.That was five years ago, and Solkaer hasn't stopped, making the murmurations the subject of an exhibition and book, Black Sun. "I've pretty much done it every winter ever since, and I don't have any plans of stopping anytime soon," he says. Before then, and despite his childhood awakening, Solkaer had never turned his lens to birds. "I still don't photograph individual birds, because I don't find it visually interesting to just depict a bird, it doesn't interest me artistically." Continue reading...