On This Earth, A Shadow Falls

In 2001, Nick Brandt embarked on an ambitious photographic project, a trilogy of books memorializing the vanishing natural grandeur of East Africa. Focusing on some of the world’s last great populations of large mammals—elephants, giraffes, lions, gorillas, and their kin—he created two of the new century’s most influential photographic books: On This Earth (2005) and A Shadow Falls (2009). His iconic portraits of these majestic animals express an empathy usually reserved for human subjects. The magisterial On This Earth, A Shadow Falls collects the most memorable images from Brandt’s first two books, along with their accompanying essays. A testament to the bookmaker’s craft, it is the first volume on Brandt’s work to capture the superb quality of his remarkable, large-format prints, which are notable for their velvety blacks and tonal subtleties. At 15 x 13 inches it is substantially larger than his previous books, and it comes in a handsome cloth binding with a tipped-in plate on the front.