Francesca Todde
A Sensitive Education
40 € EUR
New Revised Edition ︎︎ 2026
With A Sensitive Education the photographer Francesca Todde explores, through the figure of bird educator Tristan Plot, the possibilities of empathy between different natural species. The narrative, far from being a naturalist documentation, is rather focused on the emotional sphere and sensitivity of birds and humans. The photographic research develops in resonance with the delicacy of this wordless dialogue.
Tristan is a bird educator specialist in soft methods. He prepares birds for participation in theatre and dance performances or film documentaries. He also works on the new concept of ornitotherapy and mediation through the animal, creating contact between birds and people with disabilities, the elderly, prisoners, in order to promote new sensations and create a deep reconciliation between birds and humans.
When he was a child, in the forest behind his parents’ house in the Touraine, Tristan noticed that, if he remained still for a long time, the animals came out of the vegetation and it was possible to observe them. Even today, this practice of slow approach, respecting the rhythm of nature, remains essential to his educational method. Since he studied ecology, biology and ethology at the university, he developed an educational technique at the intersection of imprinting, traditional training and positive training. His method is a set of observation and predisposition of mind in harmony with the environment, according to the sensitivity of the other and in relation to expression and behavior codes which are different from the human ones. Tristan, through the intuition of animality as something delicate, subtle and minimal, defines the relationship with birds as an exclusive bond able to reconcile the rhythm of the species with the individual one. His research is based on the understanding of the sensitivity of birds and aims to recover that ability, which got lost over the course of evolution, of perceiving the minimal variations and micro movements that are the expressive world of animals.
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Press Review and Interviews:
Conscientious Photography Magazine by Jörg Colberg
British Journal of Photography
by Frankie Lister-Fell
Collector Daily
by Olga Yatskevich
American Suburb X
by Brad Feuerhelm
Photomonitor.co.uk
by Francesca Marcaccio Hitzeman
Photoeye
2020 Best Books
by Terri Weifenbach
Photobookstore
Best books of 2020
by Terri Weifenbach
Pellicola Magazine
by Anna Bulgarelli
Domus
by Raffaele Vertaldi
Fabien Ribery
L’Intervalle Blog
Fisheye Magazine
by Eric Karsenty
Tending to the Garden
by Matthew Dunne
Blind Magazine
by Anne Laurens
Rolling Stone Italia
by Francesca Orsi
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Selected exhibitions:
Circulation(s) Paris
Cortona on the Move
PVF Helsinki
ARCOOP wall project Geneve
Les Boutographies (projection)
Les Nuits de Pierrevert
BYOPaper! Les Rencontres d’Arles
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Premio Amilcare G. Ponchielli for the best italian photobook 2020/21.
Special mention at Premio Marco Bastianelli for the best italian photobook of 2020.
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40 € EUR
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Language: EN
Text by Luca Reffo and Francesca Todde
Translation by Anna Eva De Chiara
Third revised edition:
112 pages
160x210 mm
Hard Cover + Belly Band
4-color offset with UV
Fedrigoni Woodstock Giallo 110 g/m
Fedrigoni Woodstock Cipria 110 g/m
Munken Lynx Rough 150 g/m
Wibalin WBN564 Sky Blue 120 g/m
Third Revised Edition, 800 copies
June 2026
Publisher: Départ Pour l’Image
ISBN 978-88-947598-8-4
