A. Born in 1966 and raised in London, England, Brandt studied Painting, and then Film at Saint Martin's School of Art.He moved to the United States in 1992 and directed many award-winning music videos for the likes of Michael Jackson (Earth Song, Stranger in Moscow).
B. In 2000, Brandt embarked upon his ambitious photographic project: a
trilogy of books to memorialize the vanishing natural grandeur of East
Africa. His photography bears little relation to the colour documentary-style
wildlife photography that is the norm. He photographs on medium-format
black and white film without telephoto or zoom lenses. (He uses a Pentax 67II with only two fixed lenses.)
C. His work is a combination of epic panoramas of animals within dramatic landscapes (for example, Hippos on the Mara River, Masai Mara, 2006; Cheetah & Cubs Lying on Rock, Serengeti
2007), and graphic portraits more akin to studio portraiture of human
subjects from the early 20th Century, as if these animals were already
long dead (Elephant Drinking, Amboseli, 2007)
D. Brandt does not use telephoto lenses because he believes that being
close to the animals make a huge difference in his ability to reveal
their personality. He writes: "You wouldn't take a portrait of a human
being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you'd
move in close."
E. As American photography critic Vicki Goldberg
writes: "Many pictures convey a rare sense of intimacy, as if Brandt
knew the animals, had invited them to sit for his camera, and had a
prime portraitist's intuition of character...as elegant as any arranged
by Arnold Newman for his human high achievers". Photographs like (Cheetah & Cubs, Masai Mara, 2003; Lion Before Storm – Sitting Profile, Masai Mara 2006) are good examples of this.
F. In his afterword in On This Earth, Brandt explains the reasons for the methods he uses:
G. I'm not interested in creating work that is simply documentary or filled
with action and drama, which has been the norm in the photography of
animals in the wild. What I am interested in is showing the animals
simply in the state of Being. In the state of Being before they are no
longer are. Before, in the wild at least, they cease to exist. This
world is under terrible threat, all of it caused by us. To me, every
creature, human or nonhuman, has an equal right to live, and this
feeling, this belief that every animal and I are equal, affects me every
time I frame an animal in my camera. The photos are my elegy to these
beautiful creatures, to this wrenchingly beautiful world that is
steadily, tragically vanishing before our eyes.
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