The Pet Show #24 水谷吉法 Yoshinori Mizutani

Tokyo Parrots, 2013 © Yoshinori Mizutani | Courtesy of Christophe Guye Galerie

水谷吉法

生于1987年，日本

当我看到成群的鹦鹉在天空中飞舞时，我感到一阵恐惧。我仿佛走进了希区柯克的电影《鸟》里。

每天早晨，几只鹦鹉组成的群体会飞到东京世田谷区我家附近的一棵榆树上。我每天都看着这些鸟群的到来。最终，越来越多的鹦鹉群出现，直到最后，数百只鹦鹉这一奇异的场景出现在我眼前。这些鹦鹉拥有异常明亮的石灰绿色翅膀。它们是热带鸟类，与东京的环境格格不入，我发现它们的出现令人不安。

我查了一些资料，发现这些鹦鹉是上世纪60年代和70年代从印度和斯里兰卡的热带地区被带到日本的，原本是作为宠物出售。它们后来变成野生，并把东京作为了它们的家。如今，它们已经繁衍了成千上万只。发现这些鹦鹉之后，我用接下来的约一年时间追踪了它们。它们会分成小群，飞回各自的巢穴。我发现最大的一个巢穴位于东京工业大学大冈山校区的一棵银杏树上。我用闪光灯拍摄这些夜晚归巢的鹦鹉。这些鹦鹉本不该出现在东京，但它们确实存在。而我在第一次看到它们群飞时的那种强烈的诡异感觉，正是我在这些照片中所捕捉到的。

东京鹦鹉，2013年 © 水谷吉法,由 Christophe Guye Galerie 提供

Yoshinori Mizutani

B. 1987, Japan

When I saw hundreds of parakeets swarming the sky, I was struck by fear. I felt as if I’d walked into the Hitchcock film The Birds.

Every morning, flocks of several parakeets each would fly to the elm tree near my home in Tokyo’s Setagaya ward. I watched these flocks arrive daily. Eventually, more and more flocks showed until finally, this strange scene of hundreds of parakeets appeared. The parakeets had overly bright, lime green wings. These tropical birds were incongruous with the Tokyo environment and I found their appearance disturbing.

I did some research and found out that these parakeets were brought to Japan in the 1960s and 1970s from tropical regions in India and Sri Lanka to be sold as pets. They had since gone wild and made Tokyo their home. Today, they’ve multiplied to thousands.

Shocked by my encounter of the parakeets, I chased them for about a year afterwards.

They broke up into groups and flew back to their respective nests. I discovered that the biggest nest was in a ginkgo tree on the Tokyo institute of Technology campus in Ookayama, Meguro. I used strobes to photograph the parakeets in the evenings, when they went home.

These parakeets aren’t supposed to exist in Tokyo, but they do. And it’s the intensely uncanny feeling I felt when I first saw the swarm, which I’ve captured in these photographs.