Following an invariable pattern, Mylayne’s titles convey his method and theoretical concerns. Numbered chronologically and stating the year and months of production – making no reference to location or bird species – they reveal time as the fundamental aspect of his work. This archival method of titling indicates the two different temporal modalities that determine the artworks.

Challenging parameters are set to bring these images into being. Mylayne identifies an individual bird, conceives of a visual idea, sets up his equipment in a place that the bird frequents and waits for particular light conditions. Contending with changes in weather and seasons, he repeats the process with scientific precision: setting up his gear daily and taking it all down every night, only to reinstall it in the same position the following day. The principles of repetition and difference are also employed in the presentation of Mylayne’s works.

Variations of the same shot are often grouped together, thus inviting comparative viewing. N° 409, Avril Mai 2006 and N° 411, Avril Mai 2006 (both 2006) – two images showing a different single bird in the same setting sitting on a branch amid a few daisies – offer up new details upon each viewing. Within the abrupt transitions from blurred to extremely sharp, there are several points to focus on. Without a one-point perspective to understand and organize the depicted landscapes, the viewer’s eyes are compelled to move searchingly through sudden changes in spatial registers. This dynamic character is achieved using lenses of varying focal lengths that are specifically built to fit the artist’s purposes, lending his works a certain painterly quality. Reading these images must take place incrementally as well as synoptically.

As with Mylayne’s photography, exact copies do not exist in nature. Pointing toward recognizable individuality in his subjects, the ‘A’ in A 7, Novembre 2006 – Mars 2007 (2006/2007) stands for ami. The ‘friend’ is a sharp bluebird with shiny feathers that sits at the center of a uniformly blurred background.

Color is also used to generate rhythm within a restrained aesthetic; dashes of red – in a male vermilion flycatcher or a bush in bloom – run through a row of images on show. An orange bird engages the viewer with its direct gaze and tentative posture in N° 540, Mars Avril Mai 2007 (2007). Framed in the absolute center of an otherwise heavily blurred picture, the bird finds itself in the crosshairs of shadows created by surrounding trees – no doubt an allusion to the lines that structure the composition in the photographer's mind and the camera’s viewfinder. Although this particular bird makes it hard not to assume it had something to ask the viewer, Mylayne has no interest in anthropomorphizing his avian subjects. Instead, the continuing theme in his works is the innate wisdom that can be detected in nature’s systems and cycles.

Establishing a connection to current debates about the negative impact human activity has on the planet, Mylayne’s photography – with its singularity and disfavor of a vanishing point – seems to ask the viewer to adopt a different point of view, one that refutes the anthropocentric perspective. A notion mirrored in the works’ individual scaling that references the viewer as well as the bird pictured within. The impressive insistence on one subject throughout a long career has prompted distinctive poetic observations that elicit a wide range of possible readings and meanings. A reflection on our present age of the Anthropocene, the trust implicit in these photographs leaves viewers with much to consider.