Nick Brandt: Inherit the Dust

Nick Brandt's life-size images of East Africa's disappearing animals installed in the wastelands that have replaced their habitats

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 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, wasteland and quarries.

The people within the photographs are oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals featured in them, who are now no more than ghosts in the landscape. Some of the animals in the panels appear to be looking out at these destroyed landscapes with sadness, as if lamenting the loss of the world they once inhabited. By the end, we see that it is not just the animals who are the victims in this out of control world, but also the humans.

Inherit the Dust also includes plates of the original portraits of the animals that are featured in the life-size panels, the unique emotional animal portraiture for which Brandt is recognized.

There are also two essays by the artist: a text about the crisis facing the conservation of the natural world in East Africa, and behind-the-scenes descriptions of Brandt's elaborate production process, with accompanying documentary photographs.

Nick Brandt (born 1964) photographs exclusively in Africa. Born in Britain and currently based in Southern California, Brandt cofounded Big Life Foundation in 2010, which helps protect the endangered wildlife inhabiting a large area of East Africa.