Have you ever seen Nick Brandt‘s photography? I have been intrigued by his amazing portraits of animals in Africa. Nick Brandt has produced a powerful collection of works expressing the beauty and grandeur of the wild animals into wildlife. His images are very artful and differs from those we have been used to see. He does not just shooting wildlife. He evokes emotions. Nick Brandt captivates animal’s feelings and convey them to his audience arising emotions. He places his models into a magnificent nature scenery, directing them with his lenses and lights. It is hard not to look into the animals, feel their emotions, it is hard not to sense the awe and beauty of those wild creatures. It is hard not to love them.
“It’s getting harder and harder to capture these animals because every year there’s less of them,” Mr. Brandt said. “So I’m actually taking longer and longer to take these photographs but my mission is still to try and show them as sentient creatures.”
“African wildlife has never looked so regal and mysterious as in Brandt’s grave photographs. His elephants appear as weighty as the pyramids. His rhinos look more ancient than carbon. His apes know something we don’t. Given the multitude of human disasters in Africa, is it an indulgence to lose yourself in pictures that carry no hint of the wars and famines outside the frame? Not when the pictures are such powerful reminders that Africa is also a magnificent—and endangered—treasure house of animal life.”
– Time Magazine (Time Top Five Photographic Books of 2005)
“The photographs of Nick Brandt are both beautiful and haunting. They come upon you in a flush of abundance that is almost impossible to recover from…. You are about to enter a world of the imagination where all the animals are real, both fragile and full of grace.”
– Alice Sebold, Author of “The Lovely Bones”
“Nick Brandt’s images of the animals of Eastern Africa take one’s breath away. These powerful glimpses of another world are so intimate one might hear the rustle of brush as a cheetah makes herself known, or the breathing of a lion as he stands alert. One cannot help but connect with these animals. They each have a unique personality. But it is not mere intimacy that attracts.
Brandt’s pictures are beautifully composed, sensuous portraits. Heartbreakingly beautiful, these strong and vital creatures seem somehow fragile, ephemeral. We must ensure that its not only in images that they are preserved.”
– Black & White Magazine, USA
“Combining splendid natural backdrops with a portraitist’s approach to animals, the images in “On This Earth” show not only the reckless beauty of Africa’s vanishing wilds but also the humanity of its creatures. The photos have an uncanny intimacy. With his images shown in fine-art exhibitions throughout Europe and North America, Brandt brings a compositionally precise and painterly style to a genre dominated by action shots and documentary image making.”
– American Photo, USA (Top 10 Photographic Books of 2005)
“The haunting images in Nick Brandt’s “On This Earth” seem less like a documentary than like spirit photos of mythical beasts. Living testimony to the ghostly beauty and the fragility of nature, these magnificent creatures will convince you (if indeed you had any doubts) that animals not only have minds and hearts but also spirits and souls.”
-O: The Oprah Magazinε
