Photographer, painter, and poet Mario Giacomelli acquired his first camera in the early 1950s and immediately recognized the connections between the practice of painting and capturing light through his lens. He soon set up his own darkroom, where, choosing to work with high-contrast paper, he developed a distinctive photographic eye. With camera movement, blurred focus, and the interplay of light and shadow, Giacomelli created dreamlike scenes in which beings emerge as ephemeral apparitions. His taste for lyrical abstraction, especially in painting, is evident in his photographs, which often reveal his inner state—particularly through the graphic intensity of light variations. Deeply attached to his native Marche region in Italy, Giacomelli captured endless plains traced with plowed furrows, shadows stretching across fields, and rural house façades, many photographs also offering glimpses of birds, clouds, female faces, or other forms. His birds rise from dense vegetation, appear like shadow puppets on translucent surfaces, dwell within vaporous clouds, or materialize as fragile presences. Choreographed flocks of white birds echo the lines of the foliage as animal and plant realms dissolve into each another. Between arrival and disappearance, reality and dream, Giacomelli’s birds resemble calligraphic marks spreading into a musical score against the backdrop of a rural landscape.

To accompany this visual collection, Jean-Noël Rieffel, veterinarian and director of the French Office for Biodiversity in the Centre-Val de Loire region, has made his first contribution to the Des oiseaux collection. He draws connections between Giacomelli's images and ornithology, paying particular attention to larids (gulls and seagulls) and corvids, subjects dear to the photographer.