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Artist Biography

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Elephant Drinking, Amboseli, 2007

British photographer Nick Brandt (b. 1966) is celebrated for stark, stunning, and shockingly intimate portraits of subjects many viewers have never seen up close: the endangered animal populations that inhabit the desert terrain of Kenya and Tanzania. Inspired initially by a trip to Tanzania he made in 1995, working at the time as the director of Michael Jackson's Earth Song music video, Brandt has continued to devote his time and talent to what has become his life's work: immortalizing through photography the disappearing fauna and natural landscapes of the African continent.

Offering a moving tribute to a world whose stunning beauty and diversity is quickly fading, Brandt's haunting and evocative images are made without the telephoto lenses usually employed by photographers, and they do not feature action shots. Instead, the artist will sometimes invest days, and even weeks, patiently awaiting the moment a pride of lions or a mother elephant allows him to approach, and then carefully composing tight, meticulously framed portraits which illuminate the breathtaking details of a spotted coat. “You wouldn’t take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit,” the artist says. “You’d move in close.” And so he does just that. His resulting photographs are suffused with a deep, abiding respect for the living soul of the animals he captures, depicting them not as representatives of a species but rather as individuals—and oftentimes capturing their existence days before they are killed by poachers.

Brandt also pays tribute to the spirits of animals past, composing images that exist as memento mori, or symbolic reminders of the inevitability of death. For these works, which glow with the warm, sepia-toned light of nostalgia, the photographer “repopulates” the epic landscape with the remains of his former subjects—preserved birds and bats, or the bones of decaying carcasses—breathing new life into their memory and re-animating them as invaluable members of this planet's population, even in death. 

Nick Brandt was born in London, and he studied painting at St. Martins School of Art. His works have been acquired and exhibited by prominent collections including 21c Museum Hotels, USA; Fotografiska Museum, Sweden; Dunkers Kulturhus Museum, Sweden; Preus National Museum of Photography, Norway; and The Museum on The Seam, Israel; among others. Four monographs of his work have been published: On This Earth (Chronicle Books, 2005), A Shadow Falls (Abrams, 2009), On This Earth, A Shadow Falls (Big Life Editions, 2010/ Abrams, 2012) and Across The Ravaged Land (Abrams, 2013).

Nick Brandt is represented exclusively by Hasted Kraeutler in New York.

Exhibitions

Nick Brandt

ACROSS THE RAVAGED LAND
Sep 05 - Nov 02, 2013

Nick Brandt

On This Earth, A Shadow Falls
Mar 29 - Jun 09, 2012

Press

Sierra

Activist or Artist? In Africa, Photographer Nick Brandt Assembles An Anti-Poaching Army
Mar 01, 2014

The American Society of Cinematographers

Nick Brandt's Journey "Across the Ravaged Land"
Feb 24, 2014

Black + White Photography

In the Face of Death
Dec 01, 2013

PHOTO

chronique d’une terre dÉvastée
Dec 01, 2013

Hunger TV

Oct 15, 2013

New York Social Diary

Nick Brandt
Oct 10, 2013

Musee Magazine

NICK BRANDT’S ACROSS THE RAVAGED LAND AT HASTED KRAEUTLER
Oct 08, 2013

Daily Beast

Frozen in Time: An Elegy to Africa’s Disappearing Species
Oct 05, 2013

National Geographic Daily News

Nick Brandt
Oct 03, 2013

Huffington Post

Deadly Lake Natron Turns Animals Into Ghostly 'Statues'
Oct 03, 2013

New Scientist

Nick Brandt
Oct 01, 2013

PDN

Nick Brandt: From artist to conservationist
Oct 01, 2013

Le Figaro

LA FIN D’UN MONDE
Oct 01, 2013

The Independent

Portfolio: Nick Brandt's dark vision of the 'apocalypse of destruction' in Africa
Feb 20, 2013

Zoom

Nick Brandt
May 01, 2012

Flavorwire

Amazing Photos of Endangered African Animals
Apr 12, 2012

Village Voice

NICK BRANDT OPENING: "ON THIS EARTH, A SHADOW FALLS"
Mar 30, 2012

Artslope

Nick Brandt: On this Earth, A Shadow Falls
Mar 30, 2012

Image in Progress

Nick Brandt
Mar 01, 2012

PDN : Photo of the day

A Portrait of an Elephant
Oct 19, 2011

The New York Times

In East Africa, Fine Art Meets Conservation
Oct 05, 2011

News

Nick Brandt

BIG LIFE'S RICHARD BONHAM RECEIVES PRESTIGIOUS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR CONSERVATION
Nov 25, 2014

Nick Brandt

"A Menagerie of Metaphors" at the Maier Museum of Art.
Sep 12, 2014

Nick Brandt

ACROSS THE RAVAGED LAND, Artist's Reception
Sep 12, 2013

Nick Brandt

On this earth, a shadow falls, Artist reception
Mar 29, 2012

Publications