Doris Mitsch, a photographer living in California, creates surreal photos that challenge our perceptions of time, space, and our own linear reality. The artist drew inspiration in the flight patterns of migratory groups of birds in her current work titled Locked Down Looking Up. Her composite photographs combine images of those complicated flight trails to reveal the intricately orchestrated dance of interconnected routes that exists directly over our heads.
“The series began as a study about discovering beauty within the limits of the pandemic lockdown,” Mitsch tells My Modern Met, “although we on the ground were locked down, there was still a lot going on up in the air.” But it had been planned for a long time before that.”
Mitsch has spent years working with time-lapse recordings and composite pictures from her house in the San Francisco Bay Area, staring out onto a tree-covered ridge across a tiny canyon. One of her first photography classes in college entailed studying different ways to capture photographs. She was fascinated by “how photographers may toy with space and time” by employing lensless techniques such as cyanotypes, long exposures with pinholes, multiple exposures, and others.
Mitsch’s topics have varied from shifting seasons and weather patterns to the courses of the Moon and stars, the passage of airplanes, and the behavior of numerous animals over the years. However, the artist’s attention was shifted and refocused on how creatures inhabit the specific area around her house as a result of 2020’s lockdown.
“That’s one way my work differs from other motion study images, and it’s another way the series will expand now that I can travel around more and shoot sequences in other areas,” she explains. “Vultures riding thermals in the Moab desert, bats chasing mosquitos above my garden, and seagulls wheeling over the beach aren’t simply painting abstract pictures in the air; they’re also in a dance with the environment.”
Mitsch’s photographs capture the hypnotic trails of numerous aerial species, including birds, bats, and insects, as they swirl and flutter far above the Earth. When their flight patterns are blended in these composite photographs, they produce abstract formations and linear shapes that appear to have been painstakingly designed by the flying creatures themselves.
Mitsch’s exposures vary in length and quantity of birds or other critters captured in each shot. One composite shot named Lockdown Vulture (Signature), for example, depicts the journey of only one vulture as it circles in the air. It was captured in less than a minute. The total number of photographs she merges might also range between 500 and 5,000.
“I adore discovering new techniques to photograph familiar things in order to show traits we wouldn’t perceive otherwise, compressing distance or time to create a picture that could take a minute or two to appreciate,” Mitsch says. “Physicists today claim that linear time does not exist, at least not outside of human perception.” I can’t wrap my brain around that, but it’s a fascinating thought to have…when I’m attempting to make pictures of time in space, or space in time. If linear time is an illusion, then perhaps these photographs depict what flying genuinely looks like.”
More of Mitsch’s stunning composite pictures from her series Locked Down Looking Up may be found below. Her photography is also on display at the Lafayette City Center in Boston through September 12, 2022, as part of the Griffin Museum of Photography’s exhibition, Vantage Point: The View From Here.
Photographer Doris Mitsch captures the mesmerizing flight trails of birds and other creatures in her series Locked Down Looking Up.
The series is made up of composite photos that combine anywhere from 500 to 5,000 images.
She began the series in 2020, during the pandemic lockdown, when everyone was ordered to stay at home.
“While we on the ground were locked down, up in the air, there was still a lot going on,” Mitsch tells us.
Locked Down Looking Up features photos of everything from birds to insects to bats.
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