Great cormorants, Ibars Swamp, Catalonia (Courtesy of Xavi Bou)

Birds are photogenic in their own right, but this creative capture of their flight by artist Xavi Bou is both innovative and etherial. A geologist and photographer by training, Xavi’s love of birds goes back to childhood.

Xavi Bou focuses on birds, his great passion, in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes they generate when flying, making visible the invisible.

Unlike other motion analysis which preceded it, Ornitographies moves away from the scientific approach of chronophotography used by photographers like Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey.

Art and science walk hand in hand to create images, which are no longer a single portrait of reality but become a witness of the instants that, for a moment, were past, present and future all at once.

Black-winged stilt, Ebro Delta, Catalonia (Courtesy of Xavi Bou)

Greater flamingo, Ebro Delta, Catalonia (Courtesy of Xavi Bou)

The entire collection can be viewed on Xavi Bou’s website .

Thanks to folks at Quartz for bringing this to our attention.