Nick Brandt
Encyclopedia
Nick Brandt is a photographer who photographs exclusively in Africa
, one of his goals being to record a visually poetic last testament to the wild animals and places there before they are gone at the hands of man.
.
He moved to America in 1992 and directed many award-winning music videos for the likes of Michael Jackson
(Earth Song
, Stranger in Moscow
, Cry
), Moby
, Jewel (singer)
, Embrace, XTC, Badly Drawn Boy).
It was while directing “Earth Song”, a music video for Jackson in Tanzania
, in 1995 that Brandt fell in love with the animals and land of East Africa
. Over the next few years, frustrated that he could not capture on film his feelings about and love for animals, he realized there was a way to achieve this through photography, in a way that he felt no-one had really done before.
His photography bears little relation to the colour documentary-style wildlife photography that is the norm. He photographs on medium-format black and white film without telephoto or zoom lenses. (He uses a Pentax 67II
with only two fixed lenses.) His work is a combination of epic panoramas of animals within dramatic landscapes (for example, Hippos on the Mara River, Masai Mara, 2006; Cheetah & Cubs Lying on Rock, Serengeti
2007), and graphic portraits more akin to studio portraiture of human subjects from the early 20th Century, as if these animals were already long dead, from a bygone era (Elephant Drinking, Amboseli, 2007)
Brandt does not use telephoto lenses because he believes that being close to the animals make a huge difference in his ability to reveal their personality. He writes: "You wouldn't take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you'd move in close.
As American photography critic Vicki Goldberg
writes: "Many pictures convey a rare sense of intimacy, as if Brandt knew the animals, had invited them to sit for his camera, and had a prime portraitist's intuition of character...as elegant as any arranged by Arnold Newman
for his human high achievers". Photographs like (Cheetah & Cubs, Masai Mara, 2003; Lion Before Storm - Sitting Profile,Masai Mara
2006) are good examples of this.
In his afterword in On This Earth, Brandt explains the reasons for the methods he uses:
and the author Alice Sebold
. The photographs in this book are a unadulterated vision of an African paradise, deliberately contrasting with what is to follow in the subsequent books. Elephant with Exploding Dust, Amboseli 2004, the photo on the book's cover, has since become one of Brandt's best-known images.
Critical response to the book, heralded Brandt's photographic achievement. Black and White magazine called his photos "heartbreakingly beautiful".
As of January 2010, On This Earth is in its fifth printing.
In additional introductions, philosopher Peter Singer
, author of the groundbreaking Animal Liberation, explains why Brandt's photographs speak to an increasing human moral conscience about our treatment of animals. The photography critic Vicki Goldberg
places Brandt's work in the history of the medium.
As the title of the book implies, this book, although replete with images of ethereal beauty and poetry, is a more melancholic interpretation of the world he photographs. Indeed, critic Vicki Goldberg writes: " A Shadow Falls, taken in its entirely, is a love story without a happily ever after."
The photos in the book are deliberately sequenced: the opening images are of an unspoiled lush green world, filled with animals and water ("Wildebeest Arc, Masai Mara 2006" ). As the book progresses, the photos become gradually more stark, until towards the end, the trees are dead, the water gone, the animals are vastly reduced in numbers, until the book closes with the final ambiguous image, of a lone, abandoned ostrich egg on a parched lake bed. "Abandoned Ostrich Egg, Amboseli 2007".
The titles of the trilogy of books will eventually be revealed to form one consecutive sentence: On This Earth, A Shadow Falls..... The title of the third book completing the sentence will be revealed with its publication in 2013.
In the meantime, an Artist's Edition book, entitled, ON THIS EARTH, A SHADOW FALLS, (Big Life Editions) was published in 2010, combining the best 90 photos from the first two books, in a larger volume with much superior printing to the first two books.
Brandt's limited edition prints are of two kinds- archival pigment prints using a wide format inkjet printer
, and large platinum/palladium prints using giant digitally created contact negatives.
His large limited edition prints, up to 60”x80” (150x200cm) in size, have, as of November 2011, sold for up to $130,000.
Since 2004, Brandt has had multiple solo exhibitions worldwide, including in New York, Los Angeles at the Fahey Klein Gallery http://www.faheykleingallery.com/featured_artists/brandt_n/exh_asf/brandt_e_asf_frames.htm, London, Berlin, Sydney, Munich, Brussels, and Paris. His first large sole museum exhibition was held at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden in October 2011-January 2012, with an expected 120,000 visitors.
Headed up in Kenya by renowned conservationist Richard Bonham, multiple fully equipped teams of anti-poaching rangers are being placed in newly built outposts in the critical areas throughout the 2 million acres (8,093.7 km²) + area.
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
, one of his goals being to record a visually poetic last testament to the wild animals and places there before they are gone at the hands of man.
Background and early career
Born in 1966 and raised in London, England, Brandt studied Painting, and then Film at St. Martins School of ArtCentral Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London. The school has an outstanding international reputation, and is considered one of the world's leading art and design institutions...
.
He moved to America in 1992 and directed many award-winning music videos for the likes of Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
(Earth Song
Earth Song
"Earth Song" is the third single from Michael Jackson's album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. It is the fifth song on the second disc of the album. It is a ballad that incorporates elements of blues, gospel and opera. Jackson had a long-standing history of releasing socially conscious...
, Stranger in Moscow
Stranger in Moscow
"Stranger in Moscow" is the fifth and final single from Michael Jackson's album HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I. The song was released worldwide in November 1996 but was not released in the United States until August 1997...
, Cry
Cry
Cry usually refers to crying, the act of shedding tears.Cry may also refer to:* Cry, Yonne, a commune in France* CRY , worldwide non-profit organization-Songs:* "Cry" , 1951...
), Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
, Jewel (singer)
Jewel (singer)
Jewel Kilcher , professionally known as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, actress and poet...
, Embrace, XTC, Badly Drawn Boy).
It was while directing “Earth Song”, a music video for Jackson in Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
, in 1995 that Brandt fell in love with the animals and land of East Africa
East Africa
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...
. Over the next few years, frustrated that he could not capture on film his feelings about and love for animals, he realized there was a way to achieve this through photography, in a way that he felt no-one had really done before.
Photography
In 2000, Brandt embarked upon his ambitious photographic project: a trilogy of books to memorialize the vanishing natural grandeur of East Africa.His photography bears little relation to the colour documentary-style wildlife photography that is the norm. He photographs on medium-format black and white film without telephoto or zoom lenses. (He uses a Pentax 67II
Pentax 6x7
The original Asahi Pentax 6×7 of 1969, as well as the later Pentax 67 models, are SLR medium format system cameras for 120 film. It resembles a traditional 35mm SLR camera with interchangeable viewfinder and lens, but is considerably bigger and heavier, weighing with plain prism and standard lens;...
with only two fixed lenses.) His work is a combination of epic panoramas of animals within dramatic landscapes (for example, Hippos on the Mara River, Masai Mara, 2006; Cheetah & Cubs Lying on Rock, Serengeti
Serengeti
The Serengeti ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa. It is located in north Tanzania and extends to south-western Kenya between latitudes 1 and 3 S and longitudes 34 and 36 E. It spans some ....
2007), and graphic portraits more akin to studio portraiture of human subjects from the early 20th Century, as if these animals were already long dead, from a bygone era (Elephant Drinking, Amboseli, 2007)
Brandt does not use telephoto lenses because he believes that being close to the animals make a huge difference in his ability to reveal their personality. He writes: "You wouldn't take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you'd move in close.
As American photography critic Vicki Goldberg
Vicki Goldberg
Vicki Goldberg is an American photography critic, author, and art historian.-Life:Vicki Goldberg is a photography critic and author based in New York City. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and earned an MFA from New York University. Goldberg has authored several books and articles on the...
writes: "Many pictures convey a rare sense of intimacy, as if Brandt knew the animals, had invited them to sit for his camera, and had a prime portraitist's intuition of character...as elegant as any arranged by Arnold Newman
Arnold Newman
Arnold Abner Newman was an American photographer, noted for his "environmental portraits" of artists and politicians...
for his human high achievers". Photographs like (Cheetah & Cubs, Masai Mara, 2003; Lion Before Storm - Sitting Profile,Masai Mara
Masai Mara
The Maasai Mara National Reserve is a large game reserve in south-western Kenya, which is effectively the northern continuation of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania...
2006) are good examples of this.
In his afterword in On This Earth, Brandt explains the reasons for the methods he uses:
I'm not interested in creating work that is simply documentary or filled with action and drama, which has been the norm in the photography of animals in the wild. What I am interested in is showing the animals simply in the state of Being. In the state of Being before they are no longer are. Before, in the wild at least, they cease to exist. This world is under terrible threat, all of it caused by us.
To me, every creature, human or nonhuman, has an equal right to live, and this feeling, this belief that every animal and I are equal, affects me every time I frame an animal in my camera. The photos are my elegy to these beautiful creatures, to this wrenchingly beautiful world that is steadily, tragically vanishing before our eyes.
On This Earth
The first book in the trilogy, On This Earth (Chronicle Books, 2005) constitutes 66 photos taken 2000-2004, with introductions by the conservationist and primatologist Jane GoodallJane Goodall
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, DBE , is a British primatologist, ethologist, anthropologist, and UN Messenger of Peace. Considered to be the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, Goodall is best known for her 45-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National...
and the author Alice Sebold
Alice Sebold
Alice Sebold is an American novelist. She has published three books: Lucky , The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon .-Early life:...
. The photographs in this book are a unadulterated vision of an African paradise, deliberately contrasting with what is to follow in the subsequent books. Elephant with Exploding Dust, Amboseli 2004, the photo on the book's cover, has since become one of Brandt's best-known images.
Critical response to the book, heralded Brandt's photographic achievement. Black and White magazine called his photos "heartbreakingly beautiful".
As of January 2010, On This Earth is in its fifth printing.
A Shadow Falls
The second book in the trilogy, A Shadow Falls, (Abrams, 2009) features 58 photographs taken 2005-2008. It is generally regarded to be superior to "On This Earth".In additional introductions, philosopher Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
, author of the groundbreaking Animal Liberation, explains why Brandt's photographs speak to an increasing human moral conscience about our treatment of animals. The photography critic Vicki Goldberg
Vicki Goldberg
Vicki Goldberg is an American photography critic, author, and art historian.-Life:Vicki Goldberg is a photography critic and author based in New York City. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri and earned an MFA from New York University. Goldberg has authored several books and articles on the...
places Brandt's work in the history of the medium.
As the title of the book implies, this book, although replete with images of ethereal beauty and poetry, is a more melancholic interpretation of the world he photographs. Indeed, critic Vicki Goldberg writes: " A Shadow Falls, taken in its entirely, is a love story without a happily ever after."
The photos in the book are deliberately sequenced: the opening images are of an unspoiled lush green world, filled with animals and water ("Wildebeest Arc, Masai Mara 2006" ). As the book progresses, the photos become gradually more stark, until towards the end, the trees are dead, the water gone, the animals are vastly reduced in numbers, until the book closes with the final ambiguous image, of a lone, abandoned ostrich egg on a parched lake bed. "Abandoned Ostrich Egg, Amboseli 2007".
The final part of the trilogy
Starting in 2010, Brandt is taking the photos for the final part of the trilogy. In this book, Nick Brandt has said he plans to show darker vision amidst the beauty, a further diminishing of the natural world he loves and photographs. One such example is Ranger with Tusks of Killed Elephant, Amboseli 2011. This photograph features one of the rangers employed by Big Life Foundation, the Foundation Nick Brandt started in 2010. The ranger holds the tusks of an elephant killed by poachers in the years prior to the Foundation's inception.The titles of the trilogy of books will eventually be revealed to form one consecutive sentence: On This Earth, A Shadow Falls..... The title of the third book completing the sentence will be revealed with its publication in 2013.
In the meantime, an Artist's Edition book, entitled, ON THIS EARTH, A SHADOW FALLS, (Big Life Editions) was published in 2010, combining the best 90 photos from the first two books, in a larger volume with much superior printing to the first two books.
Prints and exhibitions
Although he shoots on film, Brandt scans his negatives, and then dodges and burns the images in Photoshop. He doesn't add or clone animals - with great luck and patience, the scenes are as he saw them.Brandt's limited edition prints are of two kinds- archival pigment prints using a wide format inkjet printer
Inkjet printer
An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that creates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper. Inkjet printers are the most commonly used type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large professional machines that can cost up to thousands of...
, and large platinum/palladium prints using giant digitally created contact negatives.
His large limited edition prints, up to 60”x80” (150x200cm) in size, have, as of November 2011, sold for up to $130,000.
Since 2004, Brandt has had multiple solo exhibitions worldwide, including in New York, Los Angeles at the Fahey Klein Gallery http://www.faheykleingallery.com/featured_artists/brandt_n/exh_asf/brandt_e_asf_frames.htm, London, Berlin, Sydney, Munich, Brussels, and Paris. His first large sole museum exhibition was held at Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden in October 2011-January 2012, with an expected 120,000 visitors.
Big Life Foundation
In September 2010, in urgent response to the escalation of poaching in Africa due to increased demand from the Far East, Nick Brandt founded the non-profit organization called Big Life Foundation, dedicated to the conservation of Africa's wildlife and ecosystems. With one of the most spectacular elephant populations in Africa being rapidly diminished by poachers, the Amboseli ecosystem, which straddles both Kenya and Tanzania, became the Foundation's large-scale pilot project.Headed up in Kenya by renowned conservationist Richard Bonham, multiple fully equipped teams of anti-poaching rangers are being placed in newly built outposts in the critical areas throughout the 2 million acres (8,093.7 km²) + area.