Praise for SINK / RISE
"Faced with a seemingly impossible task, Nick Brandt has created a profoundly original body of work, one that represents an entirely new approach to climate-conscious photography….
Although they are several meters below the surface, the subjects of Brandt’s mesmerizing photographs do not float or swim. Incredibly, they sit on sofas, stand on chairs, use seesaws, and pose in ways they might on land. The effect is otherworldly, as though the familiar laws of physics have stalled in this strange, liminal zone between land and sea.
Sit with these photographs and the others in the series, and the subjects’ expressions will change like water. Stoicism becomes resignation. Frustration becomes resolve. In their pensive faces, we can read tenderness, grief, and perseverance. Intimate and spare as these portraits are, the effect is expansive.
Despite the surreal, semi-theatrical settings in which these portraits occur, Brandt’s images are direct, uncluttered, and free from distractions. This combination of ambitious fantasy and exquisite restraint is a signature of Brandt’s work rarely seen elsewhere.
The photographs comprising SINK / RISE are remarkable in their ability to be simultaneously approachable and enigmatic, to be political and inclusive. They invite us to linger, to look harder, and to go deeper. With every return, there is something new to discover— within the images or within us.
With the portraits in SINK / RISE, Brandt gives us a vital means of considering what we all stand to lose."
"This book is profoundly beautiful. This book is calm. It is also a warning about a possible, perhaps probable, horrifying tragedy.
SINK | RISE is the third installment of Brandt’s environmental/ecological portrait series, which I deeply admire.
And while it should be no surprise by now that I am a fan of this series, I find myself surprised at how far this new book (series) goes beyond the previous two (chapters of The Day May Break). This is not just a new twist on an established theme. This is a completely new take. The result is deep-core good.
The images are outstanding. Actually, they are more. The images are astounding.
All three books of The Day May Break series are moving. And I don't mean just emotionally deep. They are catalysts. They move you to action, even if that action is simply a vote. Brandt has found a way to give a visual articulation to something not present in front of a lens, a way to give a visual articulation to a need. Our planet is in peril. And so, we are in peril. What we stand to lose is wise and deep and beautiful. We need to do more."
Praise for The Day May Break
"Nick Brandt is an artist and witness who seizes bleak and desperate fates, and by some mystery and alchemy, transmutes these into a gesture of poignant and painful beauty.
It has been an eon, and then some, since I experienced contemporary photographs of people of African roots created by a person of Euro-American origin, that were this tender, human and gorgeous."
"The environmental threat to life on this planet - both human and animal - is realized by Nick Brandt in The Day May Break to devastating effect in these powerful yet tender portraits. Art of this calibre is in a unique position to challenge and engage audiences in environmental conversation.”
"Emotionally charged….beautiful and touching portraits...inspirational for much-needed environmental changes."
"There is a terrible beauty in Nick Brandt’s work. The exquisite images through which he captures a world teetering on the abyss are imbued with a sense of foreboding.”
“A mature and thoughtful work that represents an artist at the peak of his creative powers."
"A landmark body of work by one of photography’s great environmental champions. Showing how deeply our fates are intertwined, Brandt portrays people and animals together, causing us to reflect on the real-life consequences of climate change. Channeling his outrage into quiet determination, the result is a portrait of us all, at a critical moment in the Anthropocene."
"These are cautionary tales of tenuous survival, and while the pictures themselves are fascinating because of how strange it is to think of the animals and people calmly sharing personal space, it should not be happening and it feels both magical and ominous, hopeful and unsettling.
At heart, the question this series poses is whether the day will break like sunrise, or like glass. For as gorgeous, rich and operatic as the images are, this is not an Edenic vision of coexistence, it’s an urgent plea for taking action."
"These images are purposeful, artistic, philosophic, political statements…. It’s not juxtaposition—one thing set against another. This is, instead, a sophisticated and nuanced, unified moment…
The Day May Break is both fine art and moral argument. Unexpected, both timeless and immediate, necessary."
One of the most influential photographers of our time, Brandt’s powerful black-and-white imagery articulately conveys the devastating impact of environmental destruction and climate change on our planet.
— Josh Bright, The Independent Photographer
