{"id":13881,"date":"2012-02-20T16:37:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T16:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amateurphotographer.co.uk\/uncategorized\/nick-brandt-1966-present-iconic-photographer-13881"},"modified":"2014-10-23T11:29:56","modified_gmt":"2014-10-23T10:29:56","slug":"nick-brandt-1966-present-iconic-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/iconic-images\/nick-brandt-1966-present-iconic-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Brandt 1966-present – Iconic Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Image: Giraffe skull, Amboseli National Park, Kenya, 2010.
\nBrandt juxtaposed the skull against the four giraffes in the background \u00a9
\n Nick Brandt
\n<\/strong><\/em>
\nFor Nick Brandt, photography is both a means
\n of artistic expression and a way of focusing attention on endangered
\nspecies. His beautiful, elegiac and often melancholy photographs are
\ndriven by his passion for animals and his ambition to help save Africa’s
\n dwindling wildlife population. <\/p>\n

He began working in photography
\nin 2000 after a successful career as a director of commercials and pop
\nvideos. He worked with artists such as Moby, XTC and most famously
\nMichael Jackson, and he first visited East Africa while filming
\nJackson’s Earth Song video. It was the beginning of a passion for this
\nregion and its wildlife that has changed Nick’s life.<\/p>\n

\u2018There is
\nsomething profoundly iconic, mythological even, about the animals of
\nEast and southern Africa,’ he wrote in his book On This Earth (2005).
\n\u2018There is also something deeply emotionally stirring and affecting about
\n the plains of Africa – those vast green rolling plains punctuated by
\ngraphically perfect acacia trees under the huge skies. It just gets you.
\n Gets you in the heart, gets you in the gut.’<\/p>\n

Brandt approaches
\nhis subjects from a fine-art perspective. While mainstream wildlife
\nphotographers shoot in colour, his images are black & white; instead
\n of using digital kit, he chooses a medium-format Pentax 67 II film
\ncamera; and although most of his contemporaries use long telephoto
\nlenses, Brandt prefers getting closer to the subject using much shorter
\nlenses. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the most distinctive feature of his work is that
\n he completely avoids dramatic animal action shots, such as the chase
\nand kill. Brandt’s images usually take the form of static and meditative
\n portraits that show animals as individuals. <\/p>\n

\u2018I want to get a
\nreal sense of intimate connection with each of the animals – with that
\nspecific chimp, that particular lion or elephant in front of me,’ he
\nwrote in On This Earth. \u2018I believe that being that close to the animal
\nmakes a huge difference in the photographer’s ability to reveal its
\npersonality. You wouldn’t take a portrait of a human being with a
\ntelephoto lens from 100 feet away and expect to capture their soul;
\nyou’d move in close.’ In doing this, Brandt invites us to look afresh at
\n familiar species and to recapture a sense of wonder at how truly
\nextraordinary they are.<\/p>\n

The originality of Brandt’s photographs
\nhas inevitably led to speculation about exactly how they were created.
\nHe uses only three lenses – 55mm, 105mm and 200mm (the latter is
\nequivalent to around 100mm in 35mm terms). He prefers using Kodak T-Max
\n100 film, and shoots through heavy ND grad and red filters. After
\nconventional development, the images are further refined at the
\npost-capture stage after being scanned into Photoshop. <\/p>\n

Although
\nhe uses digital techniques to improve his images through greater shadow
\ndetail and tonal range, he rejects more overt tampering, such as
\n\u2018cloning in’ additional animals or replacing skies. <\/p>\n

Sometimes
\nthe perfect placing of animals in a scene has led some critics to
\nquestion whether his images have been digitally altered. However, Brandt
\n insists that his photographs result from many hours, days and sometimes
\n weeks of patiently waiting for all the elements to come together,
\nrather than using a post-processing quick fix.<\/p>\n

<\/img>Image: Nick shooting on a dried-up lake bed in Africa \u00a9 Nick Brandt<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

His
\n first exhibition, in 2004, followed by On This Earth a year later,
\nrapidly established Brandt as a major new voice in fine-art photography
\n(he, however, was extremely unhappy with the book’s printing quality and
\n has since disowned it). His second collection, A Shadow Falls (2009),
\nfurther cemented his reputation, and this was followed by On This Earth,
\n A Shadow Falls (2010), a collection of the best images from the two
\nbooks with greatly improved printing quality. <\/p>\n

In 2010, Brandt
\nstarted work on the third in his trilogy of books and is currently
\naround halfway through the project. These images are much darker and
\nbleaker than those shot in previous years, and reflect Brandt’s growing
\nanger and despair at the accelerating pace of the destruction of African
\n wildlife. <\/p>\n

Brandt says he was always pessimistic about the
\nanimals’ future, but that after 2008 things deteriorated even further
\nthan he anticipated. For example, according to some experts, the greatly
\n increased demand for ivory, particularly from China, has resulted in as
\n much as 10% of the elephant population being killed each year. The
\nanimals killed have included many of the particular elephants featured
\nin Brandt’s earlier work. <\/p>\n

His most recent images include a
\nphotograph of a long line of park rangers holding the tusks of elephants
\n killed by poachers (a grim update of his earlier photograph of a herd
\nof elephants walking in line), a giraffe skull in an empty, dried-up
\nlandscape and the calcified remains of dead animals that Brandt has
\nresurrected in a macabre re-creation of the creatures they once were.
\nThese photographs are a powerful condemnation of our collective failure
\nto put an end to the destruction of these once-plentiful species.<\/p>\n

Brandt’s
\n belief that urgent action is needed to halt the dramatic decline in
\nanimal numbers led him, in September 2010, to set up the Big Life
\nFoundation, a non-profit organisation that aims to put an end to
\npoaching and conserve animals in their natural habitat. Big Life has
\nfinanced the hiring of a number of rangers to patrol Amboseli National
\nPark in Kenya, with the result that many poachers have been arrested. In
\n fact, the Foundation’s efforts have been so successful that Brandt
\nplans to extend its area of operation.<\/p>\n

<\/img>\u2018For me, every creature on
\n this planet has an equal right to live,’ Brandt wrote in the
\nintroduction to his book, A Shadow Falls. \u2018Whether human being,
\nSerengeti elephant or factory-farm cow. That is why I take these
\nphotographs. I hope that maybe you will see these animals, these
\nnon-humans, in the way that I do – as not so very different from us.’ <\/p>\n

\n
\n Image: Cheetah
\n and cubs, Masai Mara, Kenya, 2003. Brandt photographed the cheetahs
\nfrom his Land Rover as they stood together on a rock. He patiently
\nwaited until they were in the perfect position \u00a9 Nick Brandt<\/strong>
\n <\/em>\n <\/p>\n

\u00a0Biography<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n