Reimagining the Great Egret
Olaf Hajek kicks off the series with a little lesson in art history.
More than a century ago, activists saved the Great Egret from the voracious ladies’ hat trade in a movement that inspired the original Audubon Society. So it’s fitting that German artist Olaf Hajek has re-created John James Audubon’s Great Egret as the first in a new series for Audubon’s last page. “I wanted to play off the fact that fashion designers and milliners almost exterminated the species,” he says. “Audubon helped stop the hunting, and now the Great Egret is safe.”