Q. These photographs are included in the book The Solitude of Ravens by Masahisa Fukase.  Although the photographs below are not of birds they are part of this body of work. How do they extend the artist’s narrative about ravens?

A. This is a difficult task and may require you to look at a larger group of photographs in this series. Basically, Fukase’s ravens are visual code for personal loss, profound loneliness, and a sense of personal foreboding. Ravens have a psychic as well as literal presence throughout this body of work. Fukase extends our understanding of his psychic state by turning snow, the hair of young girls, and the formless bodies of people walking down a snowy street into moving, birdlike, shapes. His world is full of black birds and we feel at times in viewing them as if they might fly off the page and into our rooms. This is how images work together to extend and deepen visual narrative.