Industrial Thanatocene | Tūī
I began photographing tūī during the COVID lockdowns.
At the time, my work was almost entirely with people, and the sudden quiet of those months left a gap. Out of boredom and curiosity, I started watching the birds that visited the trees around my home.
The tūī became a daily presence. Loud, playful, and full of character. Photographing them became a habit.
One day, we experienced one of the biggest storms I have ever seen.
The storm had barely passed when I found the tūī.
Its body lay still beneath the window, feathers darkened by rain.
A life ended by the quiet, steady spread of human space.
This series of photographs began as an act of witness. The tūī did not die of old age or illness. It died because our built world has grown into places where other beings once moved freely. Glass, reflections, and the sharp lines of our houses create traps that birds cannot read. In the industrial thanatocene, these deaths are no longer accidents. They are part of a system that generates harm as a normal outcome.
The term may sound heavy, but its meaning is simple. We live in an age shaped by industrial habits that treat loss of species, of habitats, of lives, as an acceptable by‑product of progress.
The tūī’s collision with my window is one small example of this wider pattern.
The photographs do not dramatise the bird’s body. They hold it with care. They acknowledge that this tūī is a victim of our expansion, caught in the overlap between storm winds and human architecture. In the stillness of the images, there is a quiet insistence that this loss matters.
Not as a symbol, but as a life that should have continued.
If the industrial thanatocene names an era defined by ongoing ecological death, then this tūī belongs to that story.
Its death is small in scale yet immense in meaning. It reminds us that every window, every road, every cleared hillside carries consequences that accumulate, one body at a time.
This series is for the tūī, and for all the beings who continue to pay the price for the space we claim.
