Nick Brandt

Combining art with activism, the work of Nick Brandt always relates to a recurring theme – that of the disappearing natural world, as (and before) much of it is destroyed by human activity. Nick studied painting and film at St Martin’s School of Art, London, and moved to California in 1992 (where he still lives). It was in 1995 that he became aware of the devastation of the East African landscape, and this led him to make his seminal photographic trilogy: On This Earth (2000–04), A Shadow Falls (2005–08) and Across the Ravaged Land (2010–12). When we spoke to Nick, we wanted to focus on his latest work, This Empty World – a collection of epic, eerie and beautiful panoramas that again addresses the escalating destruction of the natural world at the hands of man.

Nick has been working as a photographer for 18 years, but because each of his image series are involved six months of prep, six months of shooting and 10 months of post, with an end result of 45 large-scale photos. He was motivated to create the series from seeing “the speed with which humankind is invading what, such a short time ago, was wild habitat.” is an ambitious project, showing a world where, overwhelmed by runaway development such as roads and stations, there is no longer space for animals to survive in the East African landscape. “The images were photographed on constructed sets in Maasai community land in Kenya,” Nick says. “Afterwards, the sets were removed and all their elements recycled, with almost zero waste. No evidence of the shoot now remains in the landscape.”