Nick Brandt presented his engaged photographic projects “The day may break” in Brussels at the Hangar Gallery space in Brussels (2025-9-21). The photographic work spans the globe to document and tell the story of a an endangered planet. The environmental and social fabric is at risk of an unprecented scale in the 21st century. Rather than producing hours of documentation, Nick Brandt focuses on images that stick. His “mise en scene” is meant to haunt us. And it succeeds in it. In the best sense of a tradition of a “photographe engagé” he intends to convey messages, even whole narratives to us about and from people in remote places, who are endangered through our inaction or paralysis in front of the challenges posed by global warming and climate change as well as the social and societal consequences.
We can save people from drowning in floods and rising sea levels. The chapter Sink / Rise of this project was produced with people from the Fiji islands who participated in the futuristic scenario of a sunk island. Without accusations, these people question us. Why? How? What for? Where to? – without speaking a word. They spend time in on a sunk island, surrounded, submerged by beautiful, but morbid, turquoise water and the graveyard-like remainders of a broken coral reef. These are photographs not of these people, but about them, about their likely fate, and (very important) produced with them as empowered actors. May they have a chance to rise like a phoenix from the ashes from these photos.
The documentation on the “Making of …” (image below) as part of the same exhibition allows transparency and additional insights into the artist’s work and proceedings.
(Image: Hangar Gallery, Brussels 2025-9-21, On the making of Sink / Rise by Nick Brandt)
