On This Earth, a Shadow Falls

In 2001, Nick Brandt embarked on an ambitious photographic project, a trilogy of books memorializing the fast-disappearing natural grandeur of East Africa. Focusing on some of the world's last great populations of large mammals--elephants, giraffes, lions, gorillas and their kin--he created two of the twenty-first century's most popular photographic books: the instant bestsellers "On This Earth" (2005) and "A Shadow Falls" (2009). Portraying East Africa's animals with a solemnity and empathy usually reserved for human subjects, Brandt's photographs "tell us, in a way that is beyond words, that we do not own this planet, and are not the only beings living on it who matter," as philosopher Peter Singer writes in an essay in this new volume. "On This Earth, A Shadow Falls" collects the most memorable images from Brandt's first two books in a handsome linen-bound edition, printed in quadratone at Meridian in the U.S. A bestseller since its release in 2012, "On This Earth, A Shadow Falls" includes essays by Peter Singer, renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, author Alice Sebold and photography critic Vicki Goldberg. With Africa's natural resources being fast wiped out, this volume stands all the more movingly as a last testament and elegy to a disappearing world. Nick Brandt (born 1966) photographs exclusively in Africa, using medium-format black-and-white film without telephoto or zoom lenses. Born in Britain and currently based in Southern California, Brandt cofounded Big Life Foundation in September 2010, which helps protect the endangered wildlife inhabiting a large area of East Africa.