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).
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.
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
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.
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