JUNE 2025 · WITNESS
Bristol Birdman
Harbourside, Bristol
The premise is this: a scaffold platform above the harbour, a crowd lining the bank, and competitors dressed in homemade flying apparatus who run off the end and fall into the water. Kayakers wait below to fish them out. It's a charity event. It is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds and the crowd loves it.
I wasn't there for the flying machines. I was there for the faces.
I wasn't there for the flying machines.
Bristol Harbourside — June 2025
A young boy grinning in the crowd — grinning wider than anyone near him, broader than made sense, the kind of expression that hasn't learned to moderate itself yet. An older man with sunglasses standing beside him, watching the same event with professional calm. A tattooed man in a red bandana, watching with focused attention. A woman in round sunglasses beside him. At the back, a bearded man in a flat cap and blue check shirt, camera strap round his neck, filming the same thing I was photographing.
The competitors: a red biplane-shaped craft hitting the water mid-splash, the crowd behind it fifty deep and shouting. A stork costume visible at the bank, waiting for the next launch. A contestant in a white phoenix costume and a red cape standing on the platform, the crowd visible below in the sunshine. Another figure mid-air, arms out, the platform behind them and the harbour surface approaching.
Kayakers in the water between launches, bobbing. A small white dinghy tacking across the harbour on its own business, indifferent to the whole event. The harbourside pontoon walkway packed so dense you couldn't see the water below it.
The boy was still grinning when I left.
Young boy grinning with excitement in the spectator crowd at Bristol Birdman, older man with sunglasses alongside
Tattooed man with Union Jack patch and red bandana watching intently, woman with round sunglasses beside him, Bristol Birdman crowd
Red biplane-shaped homemade craft splashing into Bristol Harbour at the Birdman, large crowd watching from the bank
Man sailing a small white dinghy on choppy Bristol Harbour water during the Birdman event
Bearded man in flat cap and blue check shirt with camera strap watching the event, woman with red curly hair beside him, Bristol Birdman
Large harbourside crowd watching a Birdman contestant hit the water, a stork-costumed figure visible near the bank, Bristol
Contestant running off the launch platform above a packed harbourside crowd at the Bristol Birdman
Dense crowd lining the Bristol Harbourside pontoon walkway watching the Birdman, kayakers waiting in the water below
Contestant launching off the scaffold platform into the air above the cheering Birdman crowd, Bristol Harbour
Contestant in a feathered white phoenix costume and red cape on the Birdman launch platform, sunny crowd watching below, Bristol