The Cassowary

Note: This post was first posted on my Hebrew blog on March 24^th, 2021.

Exactly a year ago I was supposed to guide two photography workshops at the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem. Both of them were cancelled because the zoos were banned to visitors a couple of days earlier. It was at the beginning of the Covid-19 era.

Last Friday, a year later, we revive one of them. Masks were on most of the time, but this nevertheless gave us the feeling that we’re back to normal.

From a photographer point of view, taking photographs at a zoo is a technical and artistic challenge. There is always a barrier between the visitors and the animals, made of glass, bars or distance (often made of water canals and high walls). During photography, the photographer must either overcome them or use them. This is one of the lessons I teach in such workshops. One way or another – the following question must be asked: Why do I photograph? What is the story I want to tell?

This time, during the workshop at the Biblical Zoo, we were in the Australian zone, and we reached the cage of the cassowary, the second in size in the order Aves (birds). While the workshop’s participants took some time to shoot on their own, I took two minutes for myself and photographed what I saw and felt about this cassowary at that moment – the great contradiction between what I saw, and whatever a cassowary is to me – a potent, powerful, aggressive, even dangerous animal.

I took 14 out of the 28 images I had photographed, and put them in a gallery here, on my website, called Cassowary. Saying: Cassowary, a creature of freedom, behind bars.