Entering into this exhibition of photographs by London-born Nick Brandt, the viewer is immediately met with the “Elephant with Exploding Dust, Amboseli” (2004). The image presents a portrait of an elephant masked by a cloud of dirt that hides his visage from view; the powerful animal appears temporarily blinded as it strides forward with a commanding drive. The momentum is reminiscent of the iconic embodiment of Boccioni’s Futurist manifesto, “Unique Forms of Continuity in Space” (1913). Whereas Boccioni radically embraced the man-made, the machine, while rejecting the past, Brandt has devoted his career to, in the artist’s words, “recording this world as it is now and may never be again.”
The works on view in “Across the Ravaged Land” are the third and concluding exhibition of photographs documenting the changing ecology and disappearing wildlife of East Africa. Brandt photographs his subject exclusively using a Pentax 67, with a short lens – meaning he must get extremely close to the wild animals, which the medium format camera captures in exquisite detail. In “Portrait of Elephant on Bare Earth, Amboseli” (2011) the leathery and cracked skin of elephants is covered with a film of dust, a sheen of light glistening on the tusks, the dry cracked earth underfoot and the grainy cloud-filled skies. In “Lion Trophy, Chyulu Hills, Kenya” (2012), one among a series of “Trophy” photographs, the trophy head of a lion is mounted to a dried wood post, on a hill overlooking the vast plains he once may have roamed. The disquieting image evokes kinship with photographs documenting elephant poaching and environmental destruction in Africa by Peter Beard, but with a distinctly Weston-esque modernist precision. Placed next to “Lion in Shaft of Light, Maasai Mara” (2012), capturing an adult male sitting in wild grasses, his proud countenance set against an evening sky, increases the poignancy of both (Fahey/Klein Gallery, Miracle Mile).
Originally published in ArtScene (Nov 2013)