Imagine a world without birds.  

No flittering of tiny chickadees on branches. No mocking call from a black raven overhead. No red-tailed hawks sitting in wait on a fence post.  

Artist and photographer Daniel Lombardi has imagined just that. Using historic cyanotype printing, he has created a series of blue monochromatic prints that bridge art and science. Featuring hands in a somewhat supreme presence as they gently grasp small, sometimes nervous-looking creatures, the images are an intimate portrait of a fleeting moment between humans and wildness.  

He uses artwork to ask, “How might extinction flatten our memory of birds?” And imagines how humanity might remember birds a few thousand years after extinction in “Recalling Birds,” an exhibit on display at Good Luck Gallery in downtown Kalispell.  

“Imagining a future without birds is kind of depressing, but it’s where my mind went,” Lombardi said. “I was looking at these photos and thinking, what if someone were to find these photos a hundred or a thousand years from now? What might they think of our relationship with birds?” 

In taking this science-fiction perspective, the show looks to raise awareness of the decline of birds. Nearly 3 billion breeding birds have been lost in North America since 1970, or more than one in four birds, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. 

Looking back from the future, the exhibit describes a time when birds were captured in reverence to study the species and an effort to conserve the declining species.  

“How could a culture both worship and systematically exterminate an entire class of animal?” the artist’s statement asks.  

Since 2021, Lombardi, who works in Glacier National Park, has been volunteering across the Northern Rockies at bird banding stations where researchers capture and collect data like the age and sex of the birds, before placing an identification band on their leg. He likens it to finding a car in a parking lot. 

“It’s like when you go to the trailhead and there's a whole bunch of blue Subaru Outbacks, how could you know which one's yours? Well, you can check the license plate,” he said. “Bird bands are kind of like putting license plates on birds, so we can tell them apart.” 

Lombardi began using a digital camera to capture images of volunteers holding the birds. What started as another way to document the animals became something special as he observed researchers holding each bird reverently before release.  

“I was taking photos and looking at the photos of people right as they were about to release the birds. It started to feel like a very spiritual thing to hold this bird and then let it go,” he said. “Maybe because people's hands were kind of clasped. It also looked like a kind of prayer gesture. And I think for a lot of scientists and conservationists who do band birds, it is a kind of spiritual practice.” 

This led to deeper thought. To ask what the world would look like without birds, and then rely on a historic process through cyanotype to bring the concept to life in art.  

Cyanotype is achieved when paper or fabric is coated with chemicals, then by placing objects, or in Lombardi's case, negatives created from the digital images printed on plastic, on the surface, and then exposing them to sunlight or UV light. The result is white-and-blue, high-contrast images. 

Lombardi was learning the process of cyanotypes on its own because it seemed interesting. After experimenting with other images of glaciers and wildfire, he realized that birds were the best subject. 

“It needed to be a photo that looked good without color and in high contrast,” he said. “I just by chance started trying some of my photos of birds, and I liked the way they looked.  And then, and that's when I saw, the hands together, and it kind of all came together from there. So, it was really a feedback loop of seeing the work and then inspiring the idea for the work.” 

In the 19th century, cyanotypes were used by botanists to create photographic images of botanical specimens, which, to that point, had only been restricted to the traditional printing process of engraving. It was a blend of, at the time, new photographic technologies with art and science.  

“It's always had a connection to science,” he said. “It was used for documenting and preserving plant specimens. Basically, you can lay a flower or something on cyanotype paper and then expose it to the sun or ultraviolet radiation, and it'll leave an accurate imprint or a photo of that plant.” 

All print sales from the show benefit the Flathead Audubon Society. 

“I want to leverage two worlds — art and bird enthusiasts,” he said. “I want to bring new people into the world of bird conservation through this creative process.” 

“Recalling Birds” is on display through April 17 at Good Luck Gallery, 127 Main St., Kalispell. For more information, visit goodluckmt.com.  

Daily Inter Lake Deputy Editor Heidi Desch can be reached at 406-758-4421 or [email protected].

Independent, local journalism is essential to keeping Northwest Montana informed and connected. If you value the reporting from the Daily Inter Lake, please consider supporting our work at dailyinterlake.com/support. 

    Daniel Lombardi at Good Luck Gallery, where his exhibit “Recalling Birds” is on display. (Courtesy of Daniel Lombardi)
  

    A cyanotype shows a scientist holding a bird at a bird banding station. (Courtesy of Daniel Lombardi)
  

    A cyanotype shows a scientist holding a bird at a bird banding station. (Courtesy of Daniel Lombardi)
  

    A cyanotype shows a scientist holding a bird at a bird banding station. (Courtesy of Daniel Lombardi)