Review

Nick Brandt's ravishing portraits of African animals are like premonitory memorials, taken to aid the cause of staving off extinction. In Inherit the Dust, his astonishing panoramas of those portraits - installed as life-size panels in industrial and urban wastelands that have trampled the animals' habitats - are a jolting combination of beauty, decay, and admonishment.The result is an eloquent and complex "J'accuse", for the people are as victimized by "development" as the animals are.

The breadth, detail, and incongruity of Brandt's panoramas suggest a collision between Bruegel and an apocalypse in waiting.

-Vicki Goldberg, Art Critic, Author

The wasted lands in Inherit The Dust were once golden savannah, sprinkled with acacia trees, where elephants, big cats and rhinos roamed. These now dystopian landscapes - as Nick Brandt's unvarnished, harrowing but stunning work reveals - brings us face to face with a crisis, both social and environmental, demanding the renewal of humanity itself.

-Kathryn Bigelow, Film Director, The Hurt Locker

With Inherit The Dust, the quiet dignity of the animals that Nick Brandt photographs is shockingly juxtaposed against the indignity and disarray of our own. These haunting photographs force us to think about what we are doing, and who is at stake.

-Carl Safina, Author, Biologist, Beyond Words, What Animals Think & Feel

Nick Brandt's remarkable new work, Inherit The Dust, is a photographic essay in environmental ethics. He asks, in the most stark fashion: "What are we doing to this planet? What have we gained, and what have we - and the other animals with whom we share our planet - lost?"

-Peter Singer Philosopher, Author, Animal Liberation

"Nick Brandt's latest work is both gorgeous and disturbing...Brandt has deftly turned his art into a call for action."

-- American Photo, 10 Best New Photobooks Spring 2016

"Brandt's new collection is his most powerful and heart-wrenching to date."

-- The Daily Beast

Brandt has deftly turned his art into a call for action. (Jack Crager American Photo Magazine)

Nick Brandt’s new photographic work, ,i>Inherit the Dust, is his visual cry of anguish about the looming apocalypse for animals and habitats in Africa... The resulting images are simultaneously beautiful and horrifying, because they illustrate the irreconcilable clash of past and present. (Michelle Bogre American Photo)

The contrast he draws is striking―both an elegy and an accusingly pointed finger... In Inherit the Dust, Brandt has found new life for some of his unreleased photos. (Jordan G. Teicher Slate)

Brandt’s photographs, which at first glance can seem static, are in fact suffused with movement and with a sense of the ephemeral quality of life. (Peter Canby The New Yorker, Photo Booth)

An evocative portrait of change and loss. (Alexandra Wolfe The Wall Street Journal)

Sublime photos...a beautiful bleakness. (Mother Jones)

Jarring and powerful...the photos are as beautiful as they are melancholy. (Wired)

Nick Brandt's epic panoramas serve as a heartbreaking epitaph to a paradise lost. (Sunday Times UK)

Brandt's new collection is his most powerful and heart-wrenching to date. (The Daily Beast)

Nick Brandt's remarkable new work, Inherit The Dust, is a photographic essay in environmental ethics. He asks, in the most stark fashion: "What are we doing to this planet? What have we gained, and what have we - and the other animals with whom we share our planet - lost?" (Peter Singer Philosopher, Author, Animal Liberation)

With Inherit The Dust, the quiet dignity of the animals that Nick Brandt photographs is shockingly juxtaposed against the indignity and disarray of our own. These haunting photographs force us to think about what we are doing, and who is at stake. (Carl Safina, Author, Biologist, Beyond Words, What Animals Think & Feel)

The images in Inherit The Dust are heart-wrenching and important. This tough new series is a call to action – if it is not too late – and pulls no punches in confronting us with the devastation of their habitat. (Phillippe Garner, Co-Chairman, Christies)

The wasted lands in Inherit The Dust were once golden savannah, sprinkled with acacia trees, where elephants, big cats and rhinos roamed. These now dystopian landscapes - as Nick Brandt’s unvarnished, harrowing but stunning work reveals - brings us face to face with a crisis, both social and environmental, demanding the renewal of humanity itself. (Kathryn Bigelow, Film Director, The Hurt Locker)

Nick Brandt’s ravishing portraits of African animals are like premonitory memorials, taken to aid the cause of staving off extinction. In Inherit the Dust, his astonishing panoramas of those portraits - installed as life-size panels in industrial and urban wastelands that have trampled the animals’ habitats - are a jolting combination of beauty, decay, and admonishment.

The result is an eloquent and complex “J’accuse”, for the people are as victimized by “development” as the animals are.

The breadth, detail, and incongruity of Brandt’s panoramas suggest a collision between Bruegel and an apocalypse in waiting. (Vicki Goldberg, Art Critic, Author)