Over the past few years, Richard Barnes has been photographing the flight patterns of starlings. Ornithologists are observing the swarm patterns in starlings “with the aim of learning not only about the relationship of individual birds to the surrounding flock but about human behavior as well.”

“Richard Barnes’s photographs capture the double nature of the birds — or at least the double nature of our relationship to them — recording the pointillist delicacy of the flock and something darker, almost sinister in the gathering mass.” [Modcult]