Heart of a Bird at Whitespace Gallery brings Constance Thalken’s long attention to the natural world into sharp focus through photographs made over five years in the Southeast, from Florida to Texas. On view from August 1 to September 12, the exhibition draws from the forthcoming monograph of the same name and centers on coastal marshlands, small communities, and the uneasy border where human life meets the forces of weather, water, and animal survival.
Thalken’s work does not romanticize the landscape. Traveling in a VW camper van, she moved through remote areas where the human presence appears secondary to the environment. The images take in fishing communities, marshes, and the annual alligator harvest, framing them as places where dependence, labor, and risk remain visible. Her photographs hold a steady line between reverence and unease, showing a world in which people and animals share instinct, vulnerability, and an ending that no one can avoid.
What gives the series its force is the way it links physical landscape to emotional terrain. Thalken has long worked at the intersection of photography, video, and sound, often returning to themes of loss and mortality. Here, those concerns emerge through surface, light, and atmosphere rather than overt drama. The images feel precise, but they also carry a sense of surrender to whatever the land and its inhabitants reveal.
Born in Nebraska and based in Atlanta, Thalken studied psychology before earning her MFA in photography at Yale, a background that helps explain the psychological acuity of her work. Her photographs are held in major public collections, and her practice has drawn consistent attention for its clarity and restraint. Heart of a Bird extends that language into a body of work that treats nature not as backdrop, but as an active and often unforgiving presence.
At Whitespace, the exhibition reads as a meditation on coexistence: fragile, physical, and shaped by what lies just beneath the surface.
Image: Cold Storage 10' 7" #2, 1991 © Constance Thalken
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