The Day May Break and Sink / Rise by Nick Brandt
- A travelling exhibition organized by WILLAS contemporary.
The Day May Break + SINK / RISE by photographer Nick Brandt is an ongoing global series portraying people and animals impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.
Chapter One was photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in 2020, and Chapter Two in Bolivia in 2022. SINK / RISE, Chapter Three was photographed in Fiji in 2023.
The people in the photos have all been badly affected by climate change, with extreme droughts and floods destroying their homes and livelihoods.
SINK / RISE, the third chapter of The Day May Break, focuses on South Pacific Islanders impacted by rising oceans from climate change. The local people in these photos, photographed underwater in the ocean off the coast of the Fijian islands, are representatives of the many people whose homes, land and livelihoods will be lost in the coming decades as the water rises. Everything is shot in-camera underwater.
The exhibition comprises 64 large photographs and is a travelling exhibition organized by WILLAS contemporary.
Exhibition venues:
Oslo Negativ - The Old Library, Oslo 2021 (The Day May Break Chapter I)
Green Tech Festival - Berlin 2022 (Chapters I and II of The Day May Break)
Sliperiet Borgvik - Sweden 2023 (Chapters I and II of The Day May Break)
Newland House Gallery - UK - 2024 (Chapters I and II of The Day May Break and Sink / Rise)
Fatima, Ali and Bupa - Kenya 2020 by Nick Brandt - Courtesy WILLAS contemporary. INQUIRE
Text by photographer Allan Grainger
“Words initially failed, as I stood transfixed in front of a work by Nick Brandt of an elderly Kenyan couple, Ali and Fatuma; the man lying on wasted earth with his wife seated close behind him, and just behind them a huge elephant, Bupa, stands in a background of mist. The picture is doing what pictures should, drawing you in, captivating you.
Delighted to have found this picture I soon became disturbed to realise that this scene of serene beauty was a portent of the horrors to come, a devastation, that was already felt by those in the picture. As I went through the exhibition I had the same response to all the pictures. The emotional impact from them swelled in me, and this elegiac work left me reflecting on how I, and millions, will be sitting in the dust as a result of the abuse we have brought to our worlds.
These pictures, dreamscapes, that have a power that comments without being sensational have been created by the skilful hand of a photographer who quietly takes you to the heart of the matter.
I then stood lost in a reverie before another picture, Kuda and a giraffe named Sky. Kuda sits at a small battered table outside in the country. Her hands together resting on the table, her face stares at the table top, she is far away. It is dusk and a naked light bulb mysteriously hangs above the table. In the mist-background between the bulb and Kuda is the giraffe, its head lowered, passive, looking over her shoulder. It is dusk in Zimbabwe.
Why did these pictures affect me in this way? I had arrived without prior knowledge of the photographer or the exhibition; I was there for an evening talk about the art of Sussex. As I entered the gallery the first picture I saw enthralled me. Why did they work on me in this way? The method Brandt used to create an impact interested me later on that evening; I considered his use of fog to shut out the world beyond the foreground subjects. What’s in the fog? Is it a ghost elephant, a haunting presence from Hades? Is this smoke from a burning earth? Dust from a wasteland?
The meditative expressions and stillness of those in the pictures gave them a stoical grace. I felt that I’ve seen these faces before, familiar yet unknown. They had that rare ability in portrait photography to transcend themselves, to become all of us.
The tonality of these pictures is compressed, no blacks or whites just a range of mid-greys, creating a flatness that quietly underplays a prophetic messaging. The focal length of the lens foreshortens the pictures adding further to a compressing of the space creating a sense that you are with them in their intimate moment; the large scale of the pictures reinforces this.
After I left the rooms showing photographs from ‘The Day May Break’ chapters 1 & 2, I moved into other rooms in this beautiful 18th century townhouse gallery to works exhibited from chapter Three called ‘Sink / Rise’ that showed underwater pictures of Fijian Island people.
It was the picture of Qama that took hold of me; seated at a desk on the ocean’s floor, his hands clasped, head tilted down with a cliff of coral behind him, the tonality of the picture reduced to a pale blue; here was a remarkably poignant picture of things to come.
Perhaps the picture that had some lyrical relief in this series of underwater scenes was ‘Onnie and Keanan on Seesaw’ on the ocean’s bed, yet the symbolism pulled me out of any trance and the urgency this and the other pictures suggested left me feeling bereft of action.
What could I do, what could we do to stop this slide into global oblivion. These pictures held a quiet horror, more powerful than those that shout disaster, but will they be heard or become ghosts, stuck in what might become an underworld void of cultural darkness? See this exhibition and shine a light.”
