Little Black Book of Art

Renowned Fine Art Photographer Shows at the Air/Atlas Gallery, 32 Dover street, London

Nick Brandt began his career as a music-video director and was working on Michael Jackson’s ‘Earth’ video in the mid 90′s when he fell in love with the African landscape. A few years later, he embarked on a zealous quest to photograph the animals of East Africa, afraid that he was running out of time to capture their beauty amongst the natural landscape.  

Brandt freely admits that his images are romanticised, showing a kind of idyllic Africa, but he doesn’t like to photograph nature’s more brutal side – he points out that photographs of this kind of thing don’t fit within the aesthetic sensibility of his work.

I haven’t quite decided what to make of Nick Brandt’s photographs.  A couple of his pieces currently on show at the Air/Atlas Gallery are really quite stunning, however others remind me of modern day Athena poster-type prints. 

I can’t quite figure out whether it is the fact that his photographs are digitally printed on a textured cotton rag Hahnemuhle paper that lets the work down – (I know that more and more people are beginning to accept the digitally outputted print, but I am not sure if this does the work any favours) or Brandt’s excessive use of Photoshop to enhance his images.

In Brandt’s defence, I know that he has previously spent years trying to find a printer that could produce his photographs with the right tonalities and that he has never found anything that worked for him, hence him turning to modern printing technology to aid with the colour process. Also, Nicks’ background is in painting, so it’s no surprise that he uses Photoshop, however even though he says he is careful to maintain the integrity of the negative, I feel that a little less manipulation of the original shot, may work better for him.

Despite my reservations, Brandt’s photographs have received acclaim from publications such as Time magazine, and he has had major exhibitions worldwide from Berlin to Los Angeles.

Putting all that aside though, Nick Brandt’s work is very different to other wildlife photographers in that he photographs wild animals as if he were photographing people – close up portraits capturing them in their state of ‘being’ as opposed to ‘action’ and combining this with sweeping landscapes which stir the emotions of the viewer in powerful ways.

Nick also only shoots on 120 mm film (because of the detail in a negative of this size) with the aid of a Pentax 67 II camera. He works using an unusual technique in that he does not use a telephoto lens saying, “You wouldn’t photograph a person from one hundred feet away with a telephoto lens and expect to capture their personality. I feel the same way about photographing animals.”

He also likes shooting under cloud cover, whereas most photographers prefer sunlight. “It perhaps sounds a little strange to choose to photograph in cloudy weather”, he says, “but the flat light makes the shape of the animal cleaner, more graphic, more iconic. There are no heavy shadows and blown-out highlights to obscure, to complicate the shape of the animal.”

Hopefully the images in his show will enlighten people as to these animals threatened existence. Nick has organised a special evening at the gallery on September 16, from 6.30 - 8.30 pm, where guests can meet him and buy signed copies of the book at a reduced price of £50.

The Air/Atlas Gallery will donate £35 for each book sold to Tusk, the wildlife charity (www.tusk.org) Entry is free.

An exhibition of his works and signed copies of the limited edition book can be viewed from September 8 to October 3 2009 at the Air/Atlas Gallery, 32 Dover Street, London W1S 4NE (www.atlasgallery.com).