"Patrick and Flamingos, Simbabwe"

pigmentbased inkjet print on Hahnemühle Museum Etching

lable signed, dated, numbered and titled on verso

The themes in Nick Brandt’s photographic series always relate to the destructive impact that humankind is having on both the natural world and now humans themselves too.
"The Day May Break" is an ongoing global series portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction. Chapter One of The Day May Break was photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in 2020. The people in the photos have all been badly affected by climate change - some displaced by cyclones that destroyed their homes, others such as farmers displaced and impoverished by years-long severe droughts. The photographs in Chapter One were taken at five sanctuaries and conservancies. The animals here are almost all long-term rescues, as a result of everything from poaching of their parents to habitat destruction. These animals can never be re-released back into the wild. As a result, it was safe for human strangers to be close to them, photographed together in the same frame at the same time. The fog is the unifying visual, symbolic of a once-recognizable natural world now rapidly fading from view. Created by fog machines on location, the fog is also an echo of the smokefrom wildfires, intensified by climate change, devastating so much of the planet. However, in spite of their loss, these people and animals are the survivors. And therein lies hope and possibility.
In the picture Patrick Chamutita, he has been a fisherman in Zimbabwe for 5 years, but the declining water levels in Lake Chivero is now making it difficult for him to continue fishing. The fish catches for the day have dramatically declined. Patrick is also a farmer, but again, the ongoing drought has affected his crops.
(Nick Brandt, www.nickbrandt.com)

Read more about the project in an essay by Nick Brandt