One Loft Race — Pigeon Paradise

In November 2020, a new world record was set in the field of pigeon racing. Belgian pigeon New Kim was purchased at auction for 1.9 million dollars by a wealthy Chinese buyer at the prestigious PIPA (Pigeon Paradise) auction house.

Lucas Castel had the opportunity to picture this bird. This first photograph gave rise to a full imaginary that the artist sought to confront with a practice that developed in the Belgian and French mining areas, where he discovered a complex organization connecting professional and amateur pigeon owners who train their birds like elite athletes.

Over the past few decades, pigeon racing has spread across the globe, becoming a global and lucrative sport. This passion for homing pigeons has given rise to new competitions such as the “One Loft Races”, which pit many birds against one another toward a single finishing point, unlike traditional races, in which each bird returned to its own loft. The pigeon fancier sends one or more young pigeons to a foreign country, where the birds are acclimatized, fed and trained to take part in various races spanning several hundred kilometers, with recognition and great prizes at stake.

By questioning the evolution of a popular and local practice, Pigeon Paradise highlights our relationship with living beings in a capitalist society and in the age of the Anthropocene. Pigeon Paradise brings together a series of photographs taken by the artist between 2020 and 2025. In the course of this work, Lucas Castel also collected around fifty amateur videos of bird releases from around the world.