The Uprising

Lake Kerkini, Greece 2021

When a large group lifts at once, the sound is low and huge — closer to weather than to birds. Wings striking water, air displacing in bursts, the whole surface of the lake breaking up at the same time. I photographed this from low on the boat, wide enough to hold the scale of it. A single pelican taking flight is a portrait. A group taking flight is something else entirely. This frame is about the moment the lake becomes sky.

Before sunrise, Lake Kerkini is silent. Then an engine cuts, the boat drifts, and the birds begin to move. That silence — and what ends it — is what I keep returning to. The Kingdom of Pelicans is made of those moments, across multiple winters, photographed the same way: from the same boat, with the same fishermen, waiting for the lake to do something only this lake does.