Robin redbreast is a blur, he's so close to us - a huge black eye appearing to return our gaze as we creep towards him. The field where he perches on a twig is more in focus. We might dwell on that, might see the little bird as almost an incidental character in the photograph, except when you register the shaky image you realise you have never seen a photograph in which a bird seemed so conscious. Alfred Hitchcock wouldn't have liked this show.
Mylayne's big colour pictures of birds are intimate encounters, photographic equivalents of the moment David Attenborough was admitted into a family of gorillas. Mylayne is a romantic who insists these are not objective studies of another species, but subjective records of his relationship with animals he believes have a right to individuated portraits.
Mylayne's pictures are the fruit of field trips in which he befriends birds to the extent that a mother lets him photograph next to the nest as she feeds her young. He selects the scene - a muddy pool, a thicket - arranges it with artificial lighting, then waits for his particular befriended bird to flit into view. We see a synthesis of animal and artist: the world blown up huge, a thicket become a forest, a field an ocean, water and sky merging without up or down.
To grasp his work's strangeness you have only to compare it with mainstream wildlife photography. Animals have been exposed to the camera since the 19th century in the name of objective knowledge and sentimental pleasure, but always as objects, as creatures without consciousness. There seems no limit to the animal spectacles we can catch on camera, from Eadweard Muybridge's photographs of horses in motion to the BBC's Walking With Dinosaurs, which proved that, even after being dead for millions of years, animals can still be photographed and filmed for our delight.
Mylayne's photographs are not documentary. He doesn't name species and instead captions them with the number of months he spent on each. The way he lives - spending his time following his subjects like a migratory bird - is part of their meaning. In one, a bird poses above its own reflection in a muddy pool. The bird might be studying its reflection or studying him. We are transported. 'How do you know but ev'ry Bird that cuts the airy way,' asked William Blake, 'Is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?'
• Till January 29. Details: 0171 831 1772.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
