The Conclusion begins with a reflection on the influence of her ornithologist father on her anthropological practice, and how grief for his death transformed my experience of the Fuegian landscape. These meditations come to encompass the intertwined topics of birdsong and language loss. As before, with photography, there is a central figure with which to think: Furlong’s wax cylinders, Edison recordings of Fuegian chants, songs, and everyday conversation. These records of speech and ambient sound (including silences) instantiate not only traces of the lost and the precarious, but also intimations of possible and unforeseen futurities.

Questions to Consider 

• How do concerns about endangered species, like the Magallenic woodpecker, impact communities?

• What is invisible in the Fuegian forests?

• What are the sounds of loss and wonder?

Birds of the Fuegian Archipelago