Spanish photographer Xavi Bou has spent over a decade capturing the hidden flight patterns of birds through his acclaimed series Ornitographies. Born in Barcelona in 1979 and raised in Prat del Llobregat, Bou developed his passion for nature during childhood walks with his grandfather through the wetlands of the Llobregat Delta.
Bou graduated in geology from the University of Barcelona in 2003 and completed photography studies at Grisart International Photography School in 2004. He spent 15 years working in advertising and fashion photography while teaching photography courses. In 2009, he founded a photo retouching studio before launching Ornitographies in 2012.
The project employs chronophotography, a 150-year-old technique pioneered by Eadweard Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey. However, Bou’s approach diverges from scientific documentation. He films birds using high-resolution digital cameras, including the Canon EOS-1D X Mark II, capturing 4K footage that he transforms into composite images in post-production. Each photograph combines hundreds or thousands of individual frames, revealing the continuous arcs, spirals, and waves created by birds in flight.
Since debuting in 2015, Ornitographies has garnered international recognition. Bou’s work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and Geo. He has exhibited globally across Germany, Belgium, Russia, Spain, Canada, France, Mexico, Greece, and the United States. In 2023, Lynx Edicions published a comprehensive book of his work spanning seven years of the project.
Bou describes his practice as “a balance between art and science: a project of naturalistic discovery and, at the same time, an exercise of visual poetry”. Beyond Ornitographies, he has expanded into related projects including Murmurations, a multimedia exploration of starling flocks, and Entomographies, which applies similar techniques to insects
Image Courtesy: Artist
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