Birds - Jim Dine

“Hi, my name is Jimmy,” a crow said to the boy, Jim Dine, when his parents took him to the zoo. The two Jimmys got connected by a secret link. “Lots of things scared me when I was a little boy but this scared me and it also…I understood it.” The encounter with the bird was perceived by the boy as a mixture of fear, fascination and a deeper understanding of his unconscious world. The artist later transformed his remembrance into a fascinating series of black-and-white photos.

Are they symbolic, profound, mystic or just pictures of beloved animals? An everyday unspectacular bird might appear to the beholder as a character of mythology, as a jester at the medieval court, as a strange messenger of a world behind the scenes. Jim Dine speaks to the birds, and the bird answers, because they are on intimate terms.