The Stark Beauty of Japan's Soaring Cormorant Population
Japan has a problem with cormorant overpopulation.
Japan has a problem with cormorant overpopulation. The numbers of these black seabirds, called Kawau in Japanese, have increased dramatically over the past decade, causing trouble for the island country’s fisheries and forests. The Japanese Ministry of the Environment has attempted to curb the problem with culling, egg control, and a “scaring method.”
Japanese photographer Yoshinori Mizutani has captured an unexpectedly beautiful aspect of this abundance of cormorants (or phalacrocorax carbo): the sight of the birds perched on electric wires. Using extreme contrast, Mizutani makes these photographs of black birds silhouetted against white sky look like delicate ink drawings. In some, electric wires resemble musical scores with birds as notes; others recall beaded necklaces. “Despite their reported negative impact and reputation, it is breathtaking to watch a big flock of birds, and through my photography I want to reveal how their existence makes our everyday urban landscape somehow surreal,” Mizutani writes in a statement. “The sight of big flocks of birds perching on electric wires and flying above your head is eerie, visually shocking.”
Titled Kawau, the series follows Mizutani’s 2013 Tokyo Parrots project, which captured the dazzling sight of neon green tropical birds flying over a metropolis. It’s the second in what will be a trilogy of photo essays on birds in Japan that Mizutani is working on. “Through my projects on birds, I want to reveal issues [of overpopulation] and simultaneously present a surreal and unusual urban landscape of Tokyo, a city filled with inorganic concrete buildings,” he writes.
h/t Feature Shoot
