Nick Brandt has been photographing the grandeur of East Africa's stoic wildlife since 2001, but during his many trips he has observed a troubling pattern:
"The destruction of the natural world was occurring at an alarming rate — faster than my already pessimistic imagination could have anticipated," Brandt said from his studio in the Santa Monica Mountains.
His forthcoming series of photos, "Inherit the Dust," was conceived as his elegy to Africa's natural world. He came up with the idea of photographing displaced animals in places where just three years earlier they used to roam — but no longer can because of rapid urban sprawl. Factories, garbage dumps and quarries now stand where elephants, lions, rhinos and cheetahs once lived.
To compose his latest photos, Brandt had life-size prints of the animals transferred onto giant panels and erected in situ — once familiar ground where people are oblivious to the giant creatures in their midst. Like ghosts in a landscape.