Vanished Animals Haunt Africa's Urban Development In Latest Photo Collection From Nick Brandt

Road With Elephant © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Photographer Nick Brandt has created a haunting series of photos that merge images of the vanishing natural world with panoramas of Africa's ever expanding urban civilisations to highlight the ongoing development vs conservation battle that seems to be getting slightly more one-sided each day.

Nick has been documenting the animals of East Africa and their vanishing world since 2001 and three years after the conclusion of his African trilogy, On This Earth, A Shadow Falls, Across the Ravaged Land, Nick travelled back to East Africa to photograph the escalating devastation of the continent's natural world.

In this new series titled 'Inherit the Dust', Nick has captured huge panoramas of places where animals once roamed but now, an explosion of urban development has taken their place with factories, wasteland and quarries filling what once was home to animal kingdom giants such as Elephants and Rhino. 

Factory With Rhino © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

In each location, Nick and his team erected a life-size panel of one of his animal portraits (some were over 30ft long) to represent where the animal could still be standing if urbanisation hadn't forced them out. As for the people in the photographs, they went about their daily lives, oblivious to the presence of the panels and the animals within them, who are effectively now no more than ghosts in the landscape.

'Inherit the Dust' Behind The Scenes © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Horizon lines of the prints and the real-life backgrounds had to be carefully matched up and according to the LA Times, Nick perfected his artistic compositions by waiting for dark skies to appear so they could be lined up with the gloomy skies of the animal panels.

Alleyway With Chimpanzee © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

The images are visually striking and most definitely make you take a moment to think about what's happening to the natural world around us. 

A large solo exhibition of 'Inherit the Dust' will be held in the Atlas Gallery space at PhotoLondon Art Fair 19-22 May 2016 at Somerset House. For further information about the works please contact the Atlas Gallery, London.

'Inherit The Dust' is available as a book series, published by Edwynn Houk Editions and distributed by D.A.P in North America and by Thames & Hudson worldwide.

Quarry with Giraffe © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Quarry with Lion © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Road to factory with Zebra © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Underpass with Elephants © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Wasteland with Elephant © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Wasteland with Lion © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

Wasteland with Rhinos © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery. 

'Inherit the Dust' book cover © Nick Brandt, Courtesy Atlas Gallery.