In collaboration with Atlas Gallery, Waddington Custot hosts Nick Brandt's last solo exhibition. The white walls of the beautifully-designed gallery are filled with pictures from Brandt's recent photographic project: This Empty World.
The heart of this visual journey is located in Africa, a continent dear to Brandt. It is indeed here that all of his bodies of works, including On This Earth (2005), Across the Ravaged Land (2013) and Inherit the Dust (2016) have developed. However, this time, Brandt's concern is with the Eastern regions, where the natural landscape is becoming dramatically urbanized. It is a process that appears irreversible and destined to question the very relationship between humans and nature. In fact, if it once was nature that shaped how man lived, now the very opposite is occurring. In other words, the quest for nature's tameableness is becoming more and more concrete.
Brandt addresses this concept by creating staged images, which, however, still retain the documentary approach. For the first time, the British photographer turns to colour, drawing upon a digital-medium-format camera. This choice was perhaps dictated by his desire to work with the same kind of lightning used in cinema sets. Doubtlessly, the highly-considered positioning of artificial light sources contributed to the impeccable quality of the huge prints. What is even more interesting is that all of the images are are the result of a two photographs. The first one is always that of an animal - in most cases elephants. Then, Brandt builds artificial architectures around the area first photographed. Ultimately, he merges the two photographs obtaining a final one where both man and animal appear.
For example, in Garage with a Blind Rinho (2018), the magnificent creature is depicted in the midst of a Garage entrance, surrounded by rubber wheels.
While looking at this picture, I was destabilized by Brandt's ability to portray with extreme accuracy an almost dreamlike scenery. The animal is shown putting its left paw forward, suggesting a movement pointing in the opposite direction from the garage. At the same time, though, its posture and look hint at an inherently stark slowness, almost as if such a powerful animal had suddenly become forceless. What contributes to the disturbing sensation is that the few people appearing in the photograph are immune to the Rinho's presence. The individuals in the picture put the animal at the center of the viewer's attention by rejecting his presence. The interaction between man and animal - and thus nature - is interrupted. This set of visual signs is repeated throughout the series. In doing so, Brandt's voice ultimately persuades the viewer to acknowledge the instability of the threshold between the natural and artificial landscape.
This is particularly true for the picture entitled River of People with Elephant at Night (2018).
An elephant stands at the very center of the picture, but its position gives the impression that he is unstable. Behind the animal, both on the right and left, a huge number of people is queuing while looking at their smartphone. This very gesture, which is an emblem of Western society is transferred in Brandt's picture, creating almost a paradoxical context.
One of the pictures that touched me the most was Elephant and Human Family (2018). A human and animal family are depicted as two similar entities.
The elephant cubs are gently touching their mother, their eyes closed. On the right side of the picture, a generation of African people is shown, their look lost in the void. One can recognise that both kinds of families are imbued with a sense of humility and submissiveness. In this picture, as in all the others, it appears that both people and animals, due to their looks and postures, are waiting for something. Perhaps this something is the viewer is supposed to understand. Brandt leaves us to wonder if we are to accept this current world pattern or to fight against its realisation.
On the whole, Nick Brandt's series is a true piece of contemporary art, where indeed the documentary approach is mixed with fine art skills in order to take on one of the most present issues: the gradual, yet inevitable disappearance of natural environment. For anyone interested in this exhibition, the entrance is free and you can buy Brandt's monograph (published by Thames & Hudson) for £45.