Exclusive: an interview with Nick Brandt. The amazing work of Nick Brandt — Photographer. Like Like. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Search for:. This slideshow requires JavaScript. Share this: Twitter Facebook.
Would you say it is important for you to shoot in smooth or flat light such as this? Brandt — Any scene is instantly transformed in terms of look, mood, and emotion by the sky overhead and accompanying light.
None of the photos in either series would work in hard sunlight. The soft flat light imbued by overcast skies creates a melancholic, somber atmosphere that I believe is completely necessary for the works photographed in daylight. Pisani — Your animal portraits, placed in the middle of a bleak terrain, seem to long for nature, for the color of green pastures; do you feel this is fair to say about the objective of your photographs?
Is it possible for society to combine prosperity, progress, and the natural world to thrive together? Why should they be deprived of the comfortable lives that most people have in the West? But protection of the environment and economic benefit can go hand in hand. In many areas of East Africa where these animals do still exist — poor but still teeming with natural wonders — ecotourism is often the only truly significant source of long-term economic benefit for the local communities.
Take away the animals, and there is usually little left of economic value. Few would come to visit a world of livestock and dust. As an aside, I have no patience for the specious argument that outsiders are somehow not allowed to critically observe developments in other societies and cultures.
So for example, I think an African has every right to come to America and criticize everything here from the unending lifeless, joyless, nationwide homogenous urban and suburban spread, to the processed junk food, to the excessive material waste, to the environmental horrors being committed to the planet by Trump and his Republican cronies and henchmen.
I could go on and on, but hopefully, you see my point. Pisani — There is a willingness in your photographs to work without the use of photoshop, capturing real-life scenarios rather than digital manipulation after a shoot. Why would you say this is important?
Brandt — For me, there is a clear technical superiority to photographing all the elements for real as much as possible in situ, in front of you, without moving the camera. And critically, by everything being there in from of me on the same location when photographing, new ideas, unexpected incidents that I would never have thought of, reveal themselves while photographing.
Pisani — In Inherit the Dust, graphic panels of animals are placed in the landscape. In your most recent series, This Empty World, you fabricate contemporary urban scenarios and combine them with real animals to produce images that present wildlife as well as people in these new urban settings. What is the symbolism of presenting both people and wildlife in these environments? Brandt — What you see in the photos in This Empty World is, for me, is symbolic of this invasion of the remaining natural wilderness by humans, as the animals are wiped out in the rapidly decreasing number of places they can live.
The images from this series were all photographed on inhabited, eroded Maasai community land, without protected reserve status, close to Amboseli National Park in Kenya. Each image was a combination of two moments in time, captured weeks apart, almost all from the exact same locked-off camera position:. Initially, a partial set was built and lit.
Weeks, even months, followed whilst the animals that inhabit the region hopefully became comfortable enough to enter the frame. Once the animals were captured on camera, the full sets were built by the art department team. The camera remained fixed in place throughout, in all but a few of the photos. A second sequence was then photographed with full set and people drawn from local communities and beyond. The final images blended the two elements. In a series of epic panoramas, Brandt recorded the impact of man in places where animals used to roam, but no longer do.
In each location, Brandt erected a life-size panel of one of his portrait photographs-showing groups of elephants, rhinos, giraffes, lions, cheetahs and zebras-placing the displaced animals on sites of explosive urban development, new factories, wastelands and quarries. The contemporary figures within the photographs seem oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals represented in them, who are now no more than ghosts in the landscape.
Inherit the Dust includes this new body of panoramic photographs along with original portraits of the animals used in the panoramas, the unique emotional animal portraiture for which Brandt is recognized. Inherit the Dust is on view at Fotografiska through September 11, All About Photo: How did your idea for your trilogy of books come about? How did it become a reality? Nick Brandt: At the beginning, even though I knew this extraordinary natural world was disappearing, I photographed it as a kind of paradise, albeit tinged with a melancholy.
In fairly short order, I saw the escalating speed of destruction, and wanted to address that more directly. So On This Earth was kind of the honeymoon period; A Shadow Falls, as the title implies, began to show, through the progression of images, a transitions from a verdant world of plenty to a stark, denuded world of only a few lone animals; and Across The Ravaged Land showed man's destructive influence directly for the first time, with images such as the rangers holding tusks of elephants killed at the hands of man.
Nick Brandt's Website. Call for Entries. Solo Exhibition December Enter Competition. Selected Books. Sin Salida. By Tariq Zaidi. The street gang, along with its rival, Barrio 18, has become infamous across Central and North America for its brutal violence and deep control of communities. Particularly well established in El Salvador, both gangs have developed extensive and sophisticated networks of extortion and domination across the region.
All About Tariq Zaidi. Available on. More Info Available on. The Day May Break. By Nick Brandt. And then we waited. Weeks, sometimes months, went by before we would capture one. There were times I wondered if the project would work. Luckily, we had nine other cameras set up across the region. Conceptually, I needed images of animals appearing to be in a state of alarm or melancholy. I wanted the final pairings of humans and beasts to convey a shared sense of loss. In this shot, there is an obvious sense of displacement and alarm, which is exactly what is happening all across Africa.
Ancient paths that wild animals have taken for centuries are suddenly being blocked by roads, factories, and all manner of human invasion.
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