NICK BRANDT
AFRICAN ELEGY
In this exhibition of black and white photographs, Nick Brandt brings us the animals of East Africa. It is hard not to attribute human qualities to the animals photographed by Nick Brandt. Dignified, grave, majestic, elegant, all apply. The photographs are portraits and animals in the landscape, as opposed to documentary photography. Taken at close range after hours of observation, his subjects, the elephants, rhinos, giraffes and other creatures of the plain are awesome in their size and power, but what we see through his vision is their immense gravity. We see the animals in their natural habitat with the vast African sky behind them, in the grassy plains of the Serengeti and the rolling hills of the Maasai Mara. It is the elegaic tone of the work that makes us understand the tragedy of this vanishing beauty.
Nick Brandt lives in Topanga Canyon, California after moving there from London fourteen years ago. He has been photographing the animals of East Africa for five years. It was during a visit to Africa, that he realized that he was where he wanted to be. Nick Brandt’s book, ON THIS EARTH, PHOTOGRAPHS OF EAST AFRICA was published by Chronicle Books in 2005.