When Nick Brandt released the first chapter of his climate crisis-inspired project, The Day May Break, I questioned him about the reasons for the ambiguous meaning of the title. In an AP interview three years ago, he replied: ‘Yes, it’s dual meaning: either the day may break and the world will shatter, or the day may break and the dawn will still come. The dual meaning is because the people and the animals in these pictures are all survivors, and in that alone lies hope and possibility.’
With an accompanying book of the same name, The Day May Break continued Brandt’s focus on ‘addressing humankind’s destruction of the natural world’ as depicted in his celebrated, large-scale photo epics of the previous 20 years. But with this work – first in Zimbabwe and Kenya, and then Bolivia – equal billing was granted to the human occupants of these affected lands photographed alongside the endangered wildlife.
As he put it at the time, ‘Climate change dramatically impacts the human race as well. I feel that we are all creatures on the same planet, both animal and human.’
Visual connections
Now, with the third chapter of this series, Sink/Rise, Brandt’s camera has focused entirely on the human predicament, as
