BOOKS

THIS EMPTY WORLD

128 pages, 84 photos,  15" x 13"
Thames & Hudson, Feb, 2019

$65 / £45

SIGNED COPIES are available online at photoeye.com or through galleries representing Nick Brandt.

This Empty World addresses the escalating destruction of the African natural world at the hands of humans, showing a world where, overwhelmed by runaway development, there is no longer space for the animals to survive. The people in the photos are also often helplessly swept along by the relenetless tide of 'progress'.

Each image is a combination of two moments in time, captured weeeks apart, almost all from the exact same locked-off camera position.

Initially, a partial set is built and lit. Weeks, even months, follow, while the animals that inhabit the region become comfortable enough to enter the frame.

Once the animals are captured on camera, the full sets - bridge and highway construction sites, a petrol station, a bus station and more - are built by the art department team. In all but a few of the photos, the camera remains fixed in place throughout.

A second sequence is then photographed with full set, and a large cast of people drawn from the local communities and beyond. The final large scale prints are a composite of the two elements. 

The book reproduces the panoramic tableaux at maximum size (30"/ 70cm) on the double page spreads.

Brandt contributes two essays: The first deals with the concept of the series, the second a behind-the-scenes description of the elaborate production, with multiple accompanying making-of photos.

(Note: the images were all photographed on local Maasai community land in Kenya. After the sets were removed and all their elements recycled with almost zero waste, no evidence of the shoot now remains in the landscape).

INHERIT THE DUST

124 pages, 68 tritone photos,  15" x 13"
Edwynn Houk Editions, March 1, 2016

Printed in the U.S. at Meridian, R.I.

Distributed by D.A.P  in North America and by Thames & Hudson worldwide.
$65 / £45

SIGNED COPIES are available online at photoeye.com or through galleries representing Nick Brandt.

Three years after the conclusion of his trilogy, On This Earth, A Shadow Falls Across the Ravaged Land, Nick Brandt returns to East Africa to photograph the escalating changes to the continent’s natural world.

In a series of epic panoramas, Brandt records the impact of man in places where animals used to roam, but no longer do. In each location, Brandt erects a life size panel of one of his animal portrait photographs, setting the panels within a world of explosive urban development, factories, wasteland and quarries.

The people within the photographs are oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals featured in them, who are now no more than ghosts in the landscape. Some of the animals in the panels appear to be looking out at these destroyed landscapes with sadness, as if lamenting the loss of the world they once inhabited. By the end, we see that it is not just the animals who are the victims in this out of control world, but also the humans.

The panoramas constitute 2/3 of the book. The final third features portraits of the animals that were featured in the life-size panels, the kind of unique emotional animal portraiture for which Brandt is recognized.

Brandt contributes two essays: The first deals with the crisis facing the conservation of the natural world in East Africa, and the work of Big Life Foundation, the non-profit he cofounded in 2010, is doing to protect a critical part of it.

The second essay is a behind-the-scenes description of the elaborate production, with accompanying making-of photos.