SHAMANI SURENDRAN

ARTIST BIO

Shamani Surendran is a nature photographer based in London. Born in Malaysia, she spent several years living in Australia before relocating to the UK. While she has always enjoyed taking photographs, her passion for photography deepened in 2020 during the pandemic, when solitary walks with her beloved dog became a source of reflection, comfort, and creative focus.

For Shamani, photography is a way of preserving fleeting, unrepeatable moments—each image distinct from what came before and what will follow. Through her work, she translates personal observations into visual narratives, inviting viewers to form their own interpretations. She is particularly drawn to the idea that different people can see entirely different things within the same image: a face in a tree, a shape in a shadow, or a story hidden in a reflection. Her work often asks the quiet question: what do we truly see when we look?

Trees are her favourite subject, offering a deep sense of connection and grounding. Her photographs often begin as spontaneous images taken during short daily hikes, before evolving through a personal and intuitive process that adds a touch of magic to the everyday. Her work has been described as “hazy and dreamy, full of nostalgia and misty blends of colour,” encouraging viewers to consider how imagination and observation can work together to create new ways of seeing.

Shamani’s work has been exhibited in galleries across the UK, U and Australia, and her images and writings have featured in limited-edition photobooks and photography magazines. She has also been shortlisted and longlisted in several international photography competitions.


ARTIST STATEMENT

The Last Bird Song is a quiet meditation on environmental loss, unfolding through three recurring motifs: the bird, the leafless tree, and the fallen leaf. Across this series of photographic-based works, these elements reappear with deliberate restraint, forming a visual language that reflects on nature’s slow decline. The work asks what it means to bear witness to this damage—and what is lost when lived presence is replaced by memory.

Each image is anchored by a stark central tree: bare, blackened, and brittle. It stands as both subject and stage. At its margins, a bird appears—sometimes perched, sometimes in flight—its role unresolved. Is it a guardian, a messenger, or a final survivor? Embedded within the tree are printed images of fallen autumn leaves, collected during my solitary walks. By reintroducing what has already fallen back into the tree, the work performs a quiet contradiction: an attempt to restore life using remnants of what has already died. This act is both tender and unsettling, transforming the image into a site of reckoning rather than romantic escape.

Materiality plays a vital role in shaping meaning. The works are printed on metallic fine art canvas and stretched like traditional paintings. This surface introduces a subtle painterly quality, reflecting a desire to move photography beyond the purely documentary and into something more tactile and embodied. The result is a hybrid practice that resists categorisation—situated within the lineage of landscape painting while remaining fluid across photography, collage, printmaking, and painterly gesture.

Birds and trees have long drawn my attention, but here they become more than symbols. They act as witnesses and warnings, holding space for what still exists and what may soon disappear. The Last Bird Song offers no solutions. Instead, it insists on attention—on the urgency of seeing clearly, before seeing is no longer possible.