- Nick Brandt
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Nick Brandt Born 1966
London, EnglandEducation St. Martins School of Art Occupation Photographer 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.[1]
Contents
Background and early career
Born in 1966 and raised in London, England, Brandt studied Painting, and then Film at St. Martins School of Art.[2]
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).[3]
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.
Photography
In 2000, Brandt embarked upon his ambitious photographic project: a trilogy of books to memorialize the vanishing natural grandeur of East Africa.
Lion Before Storm, Sitting Profile Masai Mara 2006
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)[4]
Elephant Drinking, Amboseli, 2007Brandt 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.[5]
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".[6][7] 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:
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.[8]
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 Goodall 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".[9]
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,[10] 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[11] places Brandt's work in the history of the medium.[12]
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.[13][14]
Ranger with Tusks of Killed Elephant, 2011The 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, 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 [1], 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.[15]
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-acre (8,100 km2) + area.[16]
Bibliography
- Nick Brandt, On This Earth (Chronicle Books, 2005).
- Nick Brandt, A Shadow Falls (Abrams, 2009).
- Nick Brandt, On This Earth, A Shadow Falls (Big Life Editions, 2010).
References
- ^ Agricultural Expansion and Human Population Pressure on Semi-Arid Landscapes Retrieved 15 January 2010
- ^ Living on Earth Gallimard L., December 21, 2009. Retrieved 08 January 2010
- ^ Cry Music Video 2001, Retrieved 04 January 2010.
- ^ Amboseli National Park Retrieved 22 January 2010
- ^ Profile Nick Brandt Retrieved 21 November 2010
- ^ American Photography Critic Vicki Goldberg, Retrieved 14 January 2010
- ^ Vicki Goldberg, Introduction, A Shadow Falls, Retrieved 11 January 2010
- ^ Afterword, from On This Earth, Retrieved 11 January 2010
- ^ Black and White Magazine Article December 2009 Retrieved 11 January 2010
- ^ Peter Singer, Foreword Retrieved 11 January 2010
- ^ Vicki Goldberg, Introduction, Retrieved 11 January 2010
- ^ Synopsis & Review Retrieved 11 January 2010
- ^ In East Africa Fine Art Meets Conservation, October 5, 2011
- ^ Nick Brandt, The Start of the Final Book Retrieved 21 November 2010
- ^ Exhibitions 2004 to Present Retrieved 09 January 2010
- ^ Big Life Foundation Retrieved 21 November 2010
External links
- [2] Nick Brandt's website
- 2010 Article Detailing Nick Brandt And The Endangered Species He Photographs
- [3] Fotografiska Museet
Categories:- 1966 births
- English photographers
- Landscape photographers
- Nature photographers
- Artists from London
- Living people
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