Nick Brandt's photographs focus on the impact of environmental destruction and climate breakdown, for both some of the most vulnerable people across the planet and for the animal and natural world.

[2] He moved to California in 1992 and directed many award-winning music videos for the likes of Michael Jackson ("Earth Song", "Stranger in Moscow"), Moby ("Porcelain"), Jewel ("Hands"), XTC ("Dear God") among others.

[6] Brandt's images were mainly graphic portraits more akin to studio portraiture of human subjects from a much earlier era, as if these animals were already long dead.

[10] In the afterword, Brandt explained the reasons for the methods he used at the time: "I'm not interested in creating work that is simply documentary or filled with action and drama, which has been the norm in the photography of animals in the wild.

[12] Writing in the introduction, Goldberg states: "Many pictures convey a rare sense of intimacy, as if Brandt knew the animals, had invited them to sit for his camera, and had a prime portraitist’s intuition of character...as elegant as any arranged by Arnold Newman for his human high achievers.

"[21] Writing in LensCulture, editor Jim Casper stated: "The resulting wall-size prints are impeccably beautiful and stunning, as well as profoundly disturbing.

"[22] Photography critic Michelle Bogre further noted: "Nick Brandt’s new photographic work, Inherit the Dust, is his visual cry of anguish about the looming apocalypse for animals habitats in Africa...

[27][25] The Brooklyn Rail described it as: An ambitious undertaking, the project required six months to complete, and necessitated the building of large sets and night shoots amid relentless dust-storms.

The requisite next-step involved completing the set—a petrol station for example or a highway—and enlisting a cast of local residents to populate each scene, before taking the second image, almost always from the same position as the first.

[31] In September 2021, Brandt released a project titled The Day May Break, the first chapter in a global series of photographs portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.

[34] Each photo captures threatened animals living in wildlife sanctuaries alongside people in those countries who have suffered from the effects of climate change such as farmers displaced and impoverished by years-long severe droughts.

[37] In the foreword to the book The Day May Break, published in the same year the project was released, author Yvonne Adhiambo Owour writes, "Nick Brandt is an artist and witness who seizes bleak and desperate fates, and by some mystery and alchemy, transmutes these into a gesture of poignant and painful beauty.

It has been an eon, and then some, since I experienced contemporary photographs of people of African roots created by a person of Euro-American origin, that were this tender, human and gorgeous.

For as gorgeous, rich and operatic as the images are, this is not an Edenic vision of coexistence, it’s an urgent plea for taking action.”[37] In the book The Day May Break, curator, author and photo historian Phillip Prodger wrote, "A landmark body of work by one of photography’s great environmental champions.

Showing how deeply our fates are intertwined, Brandt portrays people and animals together, causing us to reflect on the real-life consequences of climate change.

The people in the photographs were found across Bolivia, and like in Chapter One, had all been negatively impacted by the effects of climate change, from extreme droughts to flooding.

[45] SINK / RISE is the third chapter of The Day May Break, the ongoing global series portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.

"[50] The first large institutional exhibition featuring all three chapters of The Day May Break simultaneously took place at Newlands House Gallery in the United Kingdom.

[55] The stacks of boxes that the families sit and stand together on aim skyward - a verticality implying a strength or defiance - and provide pedestals for those that in our society are typically unseen and unheard.

Some of the women look straight into the camera with expressions that scream resilience...In a world that so frequently dehumanizes Arabs, especially Arab woman who fall victim to stereotypical depictions of oppressed voiceless beings, Brandt has made an effort to give these women a platform to reclaim their power.”[57] The Echo of Our Voices was partially funded by Gallerie d’Italia Museum in Turin (that is in turn funded by Banco Intesa Sanpaolo).

[60] With one of the most spectacular elephant populations in Africa being rapidly diminished by poachers, the Amboseli ecosystem—which straddles both Kenya and Tanzania—became the foundation's large-scale pilot project.