Images © Nick Brandt, Courtesy of Edwynn Houk Gallery. New York
Nick Brandt
Photo © Orla Brady
Artist's Talk: Nick Brandt
In conversation with Vicki Goldberg
Thursday, June 16th, 2016 at 7:30 pm
The Paramount Theater
215 East Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
Book Signing to follow
Exhibition: Inherit The Dust
June 3 - 26, 2016
McGuffey Art Center
201 2nd Street, NW
Charlottesville, VA 22902
Since 2001, fine art photographer Nick Brandt has been documenting the vanishing natural world and animals of East Africa through his haunting, majestic portraits of elephants, giraffes, lions, gorillas, rhinos, and other large mammals.
Three years after the somber conclusion of his African trilogy, On This Earth (2005), A Shadow Falls (2009), Across the Ravaged Land (2013), Brandt returned to East Africa to photograph the escalating devastation to the continent’s natural world. In a series of epic panoramas he recorded
the impact of man in places where animals used to roam, but no longer do. In each location, Brandt erected a life size panel of one of his animal portrait photographs, setting the panels within a world of explosive urban development and toxic wasteland.
In March 2016, Brandt’s stunning panoramas will be published in an oversized volume entitled Inherit The Dust. The book's release coincides with the roll-out of accompanying exhibitions featuring large-scale prints in New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Stockholm -- and Charlottesville, during LOOK3, at the McGuffey Art Center.
Inherit The Dust includes two essays by Brandt. The first relates to the urgent crisis facing the conservation of the natural world in East Africa. The second is a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the arduous months of production it took to create each work.
Brandt has photographed exclusively in Africa since 2001. His work has been widely exhibited at major museums and galleries in the United States and internationally. Born and raised in England, he lives in the mountains of Southern California.
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.
A major exhibition of the newest panorama photographs by artist Nick Brandt, created in response to risks to animal life and the natural world in Africa, will be on view at the McGuffey Art Center June 3 - 26, 2016.
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Photo © Chehalis Hegner
Vicki Goldberg is a respected author of several books and articles on the subjects of photography and its social history. Goldberg's books include The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (Abbeville); Light Matters: Writings on Photography (Aperture), a collection of her essays from 25 years; and The White House: The President's Home in Photographs and History (Little, Brown); as well as editing the anthology Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (University of New Mexico Press).