Leila Jeffreys is a renowned contemporary artist working across photography, moving image and installation. She is best known for images of birds, photographed at human scale, that explore and subvert the conventions of portraiture. Jeffreys, who lives and works in Sydney, sees her avian subjects as living beings, as part of a practice that expands viewer’s hearts by drawing attention to interdependence between species.

Jeffreys’ work is a result of years-long periods of research and exploration. In the tradition of artist-activists, she conducts fieldwork, collaborates with conservationists, ornithologists and sanctuaries and champions programs to protect and restore endangered habitats. Jeffreys has exhibited in Australia and around the world for fifteen years, everywhere from Sydney and Melbourne to Paris, Brussels and Los Angeles.

In 2023, her work was curated into The Best in Show at Fotografiska in New York, as part of an exhibition dedicated to animals in contemporary photography that toured Tallinn and Stockholm. She featured alongside the world’s most respected photographers as part of Civilisation: The Way We Live Now, a landmark 2023 exhibition at London’s Saatchi Gallery.
Jeffreys is the author of three acclaimed books including Birdland, released through Hachette in Australia and New Zealand, Abrams in North America and Des Oiseaux published by France-based Atelier EXB / Éditions Xavier Barral in 2020.

Her work is held in Australian and international collections including Parliament House Canberra, Artbank Sydney, the Macquarie Bank Group Collection, the Hermès Collections of Contemporary Photographs, the Western Australia Museum and the Museum of Photography in South Korea.

In 2019, the artist was invited by the British historian and explorer Dr Huw Lewis-Jones to undertake her first expedition in the Arctic Circle, an experience that allowed the artist to observe and interact with endangered seabirds. So far, Jeffreys has travelled around the world to photograph species like Icelandic Puffins, New Zealand Penguins and Christmas Island Boobies and has been waiting years for the opportunity to work with an albatross. In 2021, Jeffreys was awarded the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship, which made it possible for her to travel with Australian scientists to Macquarie Island (sub- Antarctic) in 2023, with a further trip to Antarctica to follow.

In 2027 a major exhibition is planned with her Seabirds series; a subject that will meditate on the relationship between these otherworldly – and fragile – creatures and the looming ecological crisis. This work, years in the making, will also be the basis of an illustrated hardcover book planned for release the same year.