Nick Brandt: "Inherit the Dust"
By Billy Kung
Today, the world as we know it, in all its splendor and diversity, is a very fragile place. Inherit the Dust the latest monograph by English photographer Nick Brandt, which will be published in March by New York’s Edwynn Houk Editions and distributed by D.A.P. and Thames & Hudson, is a series of panoroma life-size images of elephants, lions, zebras, rhinoceros and chimpanzees erected in places where they once roamed freely, but no longer do. It is in essence an indictment of man’s impact into and destruction of the natural world as a result of rapid and escalating expansion.
Born in London in 1966, Nick Brandt was educated at St. Martin’s School of Art, where he studied painting and film. In 1992 he moved to the United States and began directing music videos with singers such as Michael Jackson and Moby. While directing Jackson’s “Earth Song” in Tanzania in 1995, Brandt fell in love with the country and its fauna. Since then, he has dedicated his life to witness and document the natural world of the East African landscape, in particular, in Kenya’s Amboseli National Park near the Tanzania border.
