Heart of a Bird

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The book will be shipped in late October.

STANLEY/BARKER
80 pages
300 x 240 mm
2026

Constance Thalken is an American photographer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She studied photography at Yale and taught at Georgia State University for many years. Much of her work deals with death and loss.

Heart of a Bird is her first monograph. Starting in 1988, Thalken spent five years photographing small communities in the southern United States, from the Texas Gulf Coast to Florida. The book focuses on the yearly alligator hunt in Louisiana, where the animals are seen both as a danger and as a source of income. Her photographs look at the relationship between people and animals, and include pictures of children and of the men who take part in the hunt.