Review by Gerhard Clausing •
There can be no doubt that climate change is affecting our daily lives. Nick Brandt is a leading advocate for people and animals threatened by and suffering under these changing conditions. He is also a fantastic impresario of environmental portraits, thinking of unusual perspectives and locations for making a point on behalf of various populations and to allow us to confront the predicaments involved.
This is the third of a series, and in its own way an even more astounding accomplishment. We discussed the other two volumes previously, as referenced in the notes below. This time Brandt took groups of South Pacific Islanders to Fijian waters below the surface, in order to create very graphic portrayals of what the oceans are increasingly doing to low-lying lands, and Hatje Cantz has published the results in this impressive large-size volume.
Just imagine for a moment that the desk you are writing at, the couch you are sitting on, or the bed in which you sleep are suddenly underwater. As a photographer, how would you visualize this and make your point in the most graphic manner possible? As you can imagine, it is a very difficult feat to submerge people and furniture below the water’s surface and to make them look as if they are leading their normal lives, acting like nothing had happened.
The blue-green photographs (yes, Brandt is using color this time) present us with a very dark and somber mood, as they confront us with impending doom. Especially the portraits project a haunting, mysterious calm, leading us to think that all is well and normal, when it really is not. Sometimes very tiny air bubbles remind us that we are under water. The face of overwhelming danger seems to creep up on us in a most quiet and unassuming way. Isn’t that also the way politics is dealing with climate change, mostly pretending it doesn’t exist? In the appendix, Nick Brandt also shares some insights about how these photographs were produced. The last double-page sampler below gives you a small preview.
“There but for fortune may go you or I,” as Phil Ochs and Joan Baez sang. Severe changes in the climate are upon us all, to a lesser or to a greater degree. Those who are on low-lying islands are some of most seriously affected by more rapidly rising ocean levels this century. We are grateful for photographers like Nick Brandt, and projects like this one, that confront us in a quiet and artistic manner with a reality that seems surreal but is an actual development that might seem to be unstoppable. This unique photobook is a major contribution, an attempt in which an exaggeration in art attempts to illustrate an imminent danger in our real world. Highly recommended!
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The PhotoBook Journal also featured reviews of these other books by Nick Brandt: The Day May Break – Chapter Two, The Day May Break, This Empty World, and On This Earth, A Shadow Falls.
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Gerhard Clausing, PhotoBook Journal Editor, is an author and artist from Southern California. He occasionally hides out in the Franconian countryside.
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Nick Brandt – SINK / RISE: The Day May Break – Chapter Three
Photographer: Nick Brandt (born in London, England; lives in Southern California, USA)
Publisher: Hatje Cantz Verlag GmbH, Berlin, Germany; © 2024
Editor: Nadine Barth
Design: Julia Wagner
Texts: Nick Brandt, Zoë Lescaze
Language: English
Hardbound, with illustrated jacket cover; 120 pages, paginated; 12.25 x 13 inches (31 x 33 cm); printed in Italy by EBS, Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei Srl; ISBN 978-3-7757-5673-0
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Articles and photographs published in the PhotoBook Journal may not be reproduced without the permission of the PhotoBook Journal staff and the photographer(s). All images, texts, and designs are under copyright by the authors and publishers.
PhotoBook Journal 
Love the Third Series, We can all feel the heat, the chills, the dirt, the litter and the collective insensitivity of the species as a whole, destroying the only dwelling place and plundering the resources in search of a galactic tomorrow.