Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt - Lucio and Chascas - Bolivia 2022 - Archival pigment print. Courtesy WILLAS contemporary




The Day May Break

BY NICK BRANDT

The Day May Break, photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in late 2020 and in Bolivia in March 2022 are the first parts of a global series portraying people and animals impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.

The people are badly affected by climate change - some displaced by cyclones that destroyed their homes, others such as farmers displaced and impoverished by years-long severe droughts. The photographs were taken at sanctuaries or conservancies. The animals are almost all long-term rescues, victims of everything from the poaching of their parents to habitat destruction and poisoning.

These animals can never be released back into the wild. As a result, they are habituated, and so it was safe for human strangers to be close to them, photographed together in the same frame.

The fog is the unifying visual. We increasingly find ourselves in a kind of limbo, a once-recognizable world now fading from view. The fog, created by fog machines on location, acts as an echo of the suffocating smoke from the wildfires, driven by climate change, devastating so much of the planet.

However, in spite of their loss, these people and animals are the survivors. And therein lies possibility and hope.



The Day May Break, and the earth may shatter.

Or The Day May Break…. and the dawn still come.

Humanity’s choice.

Our choice.




The Day May Break Chapters I and II and Sink / Rise is a travelling exhibition produced by Nick Brandt in close collaboration with WILLAS contemporary.

The exhibition has been exhibited at Oslo Negativ in Oslo and at the Green Tech Festival in Berlin. The Day May Break has also been presented in New York, Shanghai, Paris, London, Dubai, and Monopoli (Italy).

The exhibition The Day May Break chapters I and II and Sink /Rise is currently on view at Newlands House Gallery in the UK.

For the best visual presentation of The Day May Break and Sink / Rise - we recommend to visit the exhibition at Newlands House to see the prints as they should be seen - mounted and framed behind museum glass.

If you are unable to visit Newlands House, do get hold of the books The Day May Break I and II and Sink / Rise published by Hatje Kantz, or visit Nick Brandt’s webpage nickbrandt.com in fullscreen.


For information on prices and availability of the limited edition artworks, contact us - or visit the WILLAS contemporary ARTSY page for updated information.

A percentage of the print-sale proceeds is evenly distributed on a biannual basis to each of the people photographed, as a kind of ongoing royalty payment. The Day May Break is a carbon-neutral project.







Previous exhibitions with WILLAS contemporary



Made, written & narrated by photographer Nick Brandt, he tells the story behind the concept of the photo series "Inherit The Dust". The first of two videos written and narrated by Nick Brandt about Inherit the Dust. Produced by Fotografiska Museum, Stockholm, as part of a major exhibition of Inherit The Dust, May-September 2016.

Inherit The Dust by Nick Brandt

Since 2001, Nick Brandt has documented the vanishing natural world and animals of East Africa. Three years after the conclusion of the African trilogy, ‘On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, Across the Ravaged Land’, Brandt has returned to reveal the environmental damage striking the East-African territory.

The photographs of life-size panels of animals in locations where they used to roam, but as a result of human impact on the environment, no longer do, carry an important message.

It is a general assumption that the destruction in Africa has to do with poaching and feeding the unstoppable demand for animal parts from the Far East. However, the problem is more complicated as it is also linked to the world’s overpopulation and the limited amount of space and resources. 

The monograph Inherit the Dust, published by Edwynn Houk Editions was released in March 2016. The book’s release coincided with the roll out of accompanying exhibitions featuring large-scale prints in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, Stockholm, and London, among other cities. 

Nick Brandt - Inherit the Dust
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Nick Brandt - On This Earth A Shadow Falls - Signed
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Nick Brandt - On This Earth A Shadow Falls - Signed
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International press about Inherit The Dust

“The wasted lands in Inherit The Dust were once golden savannah, sprinkled with acacia trees, where elephants, big cats and rhinos roamed.  

These now dystopian landscapes - as Nick Brandt’s unvarnished, harrowing but stunning work reveals - brings us face to face with a crisis, both social and environmental, demanding the renewal of humanity itself.”

- Kathryn Bigelow, Film Director, The Hurt Locker

“Nick Brandt’s astonishing panoramas are a jolting combination of beauty, decay, and admonishment ... an eloquent and complex ‘J’accuse’ ... A collision between Bruegel and an apocalypse in waiting.”

— Vicki Goldberg, art critic, author


“Nick Brandt’s latest work is both gorgeous and disturbing… Brandt has deftly turned his art into a call for action.”

— Jack Crager, American Photo, 10 Best New Photobooks Spring 2016

 

“Brandt’s new collection is his most powerful and heart-wrenching to date.”
— The Daily Beast

“Nick Brandt’s epic panoramas serve as a heart breaking epitaph to a paradise lost.”
— Sunday Times UK

 “An evocative portrait of change and loss”.
— Wall Street Journal

 

Big Life Foundation

In 2010, Brandt co-founded Big Life Foundation, a non-profit organization protecting 2 million acres of ecosystem in East Africa. With nearly 300 rangers, poaching has been dramatically reduced in the region, and is one of the few conservation success stories currently in East Africa.

For more information: www.biglife.org

The exhibition is presented in collaboration with Fotografiska in Stockholm.

For more information: www.fotografiska.eu

 

LOOK AGAIN

WILLAS contemporary is pleased to present its first group show - LOOK AGAIN. 

Look. Then look again. The first you might notice is the aesthetic. Then you might discover the other side. The artists technique and aesthetic differ, but they all have one thing in common. They strive to create art that makes us question ourselves. Art that makes us look at the world from a different perspective.

Photographs by Roger Ballen, Nick Brandt, Steinar Christensen, Jeff Cowen, Arno Rafael Minkkinen and drawings by Kjell Torriset.

Our opening hours this summer are Tuesday - Saturday 12-5 pm and by appointment via www.willas.com

NICK BRANDT [1966]

Elephant with Wasteland - Inherit the Dust - 2015 - Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt is an English photographer who photographs exclusively in the African continent, one of his goals being to record a last testament to the wild animals and places there before they are destroyed by the hands of man. 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 can 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, wastelands and quarries.

Works from ‘Inherit the Dust’ by Nick Brandt will be presented as a solo show at WILLAS contemporary opening on September 15th, 2016.

ROGER BALLEN [1950]

Eugene on the Phone - 2000 - by Roger Ballen

Over the past thirty years Roger Ballen’s distinctive style of photography has evolved using a simple square format in stark and beautiful black and white. In his earlier works his connection to the tradition of documentary photography is clear, but through the 1990’s he developed a style that he describes as documentary fiction. After 2000 the people he first discovered and documented living on the margins of South African society increasingly became a cast of actors working with Ballen in the series “Outland and Shadow Chamber” collaborating to create disturbing psychodramas.

The line between fantasy and reality in his more recent series “Boarding House and Asylum of the Birds” has become increasingly blurred and in these series he has employed drawings, paintings, collages and sculptural techniques to create elaborated sets. People are now often absent altogether; replaced by photographs of people used as props, by doll or dummy parts. Ballen has invented a new hybrid aesthetic in these works but one still rooted firmly in photography. His collaboration with the South African rap group Die Antwoord in directing the music video ‘I Fink you Freaky’ has so far been seen by over 80 million people.

STEINAR CHRISTENSEN [1946]

Old Masters - 2016 - by Steinar Christensen

 

In a sense, Christensen’s work demonstrates his ability to open up discussions across genres and may be interpreted as comments on the current state of civilization. He demonstrates a unique ability to renew his artistic expression, yet his work primarily displays traditional still-lifes, incorporating both contemporary elements and art historical references.

The artist collaborates with experts in specific disciplines and embraces new techniques and materials, in constant search to visualize his social engagement. A common characteristic in Christensen’s work is the absence of people, however his art clearly expresses the Human condition. Christensen is well known for his photographic work with reference to the 17th century Dutch Golden Age as well as his monumental steel sculptures, star installations and international performances. In his most recent work he envisions the subject of death, through Kerberos, the dog of Hades, who guards the entrance to hell and devours the flesh of those who pass.

JEFF COWEN [1966] 

MOANA - 2007 - by Jeff Cowen

Jeff Cowen is recognized by his painterly and sculptural mural-sized compositions. During nearly 30 years now, black-and-white film photography has been at the center of Jeff Cowen’s art practice. His work incorporates subject (matter) such as the human figure, landscapes, still life and abstractions. He is captivated by what he calls the non-moment, the point in time just before or after something has happened. In his continual search for the unseen, Cowen’s imagery confronts our habits as visual voyagers and does not conform to any genre.

Cowen challenges the boundaries between photography, painting and sculpture. The artist works on thick silver based paper and adds a sense of form and depth by ripping the prints to pieces before re-assembling them to make something even more beautiful. Furthermore he experiments with various chemical treatments, specialized darkroom techniques or painted color.

ARNO RAFAEL MINKKINEN [1945]

Laurence Ta Cenc - 2002 - by Arno Rafael Minkkinen

For nearly 45 years now, Minkkinen has devoted his work exclusively to the nude self-portrait as a primary vehicle to express the human condition through images made in natural and urban landscapes. His photographs encompass several other genres, such as art performance, the male with female nude, and landscape photography, resulting in a body of work that challenges classification. Inviting the viewer to become a voyeur of sorts, he captures the beauty of being part of something bigger and more permanent than one’s own naked self.

KJELL TORRISET [1950]

Torriset´s interest in Art History, languages, literature and philosophical themes is evident in his fragmentary imagery. In his drawings, the rich and distinctive repertoire of shapes, architecture and written language are significant themes and articulated in a spontaneous but nuanced expression. His diverse methods form a dialogue between recognizable symbols and abstract structures, a visual universe where an enigmatic existence often emerges. The timelines intersect with these creations that carries within themselves the past and present where the human condition is considered in a wider historical perspective. In this exhibition we present Arctic Stare - an installation consisting of 32 individually framed drawings.

'I suppose its an ambitious work and one that I worked with over some time. I think I did decide that the drawings, as the work grew,  belonged to each other in some way and that I eventually wanted them exhibited together - as one piece.

They represented my many interests, my approach, all that I wanted my art to reflect, my interest in history, politics, religion, literature etc etc. and that gradually the dialogue between and across the work could come to the fore and demonstrate a coherence, or even the disjunction, in this  broad conversation - with so many voices, and that you as a viewer also became part of that conversation and made the connections that were needed. The sum of the many parts became the work, although many of the drawings could stand on their own, the chorale took on its own expression.

The title 'Arctic Stare' has been borrowed from a photo caption in W.H.Auden and Louis MacNeice's book "Journey to Iceland" from 1937 where the authors became aware of the nordic tendency to stare unrestrained, as if in a trance, at the world. Where I grew up we used to call this "Saude-stirren", the way sheep or the bovine creatures stare in almost hypnotised concentration and curiosity back at you.'

Kjell Torriset - June 2016.