This post is also available in: French

What kind of world will we be leaving behind? Will our legacy turn out to be nothing but dust? This summer, the National Museum of Finland offers visitors the chance to see and experience the large panoramic pictures of photographer Nick Brandt (born 1964), which depict the changing environments and endangered animals of East Africa. Born in the United Kingdom, Brandt sees animals as individuals and photographs them using the same portrait technique used to photograph people. By doing so, he has succeeded in capturing the uniqueness of animals.

Brandt originally photographed the animals featured in the Inherit the Dust exhibition – rhinos, elephants, lions, giraffes, chimpanzees and zebras – in 2003-2012. Later, in 2014, he took life-sized pictures of the animals back to places that used to be the animals’ habitats. The exhibition is produced by the National Museum of Finland in collaboration with Fotografiska. The similar exhibition previously held in Stockholm was one of Fotografiska’s most popular exhibitions ever.

The 27 large, black-and-white panoramic photographs displayed at the National Museum of Finland are shocking, but also inspire discussion about what we could do. The threat of declining biodiversity affects everyone. However, through our own choices we can all contribute to the preservation of biodiversity and the building of a shared future. In 2010, Nick Brandt’s concerns over destruction of the animals and natural world of East Africa led him to co-found Big Life Foundation. The foundation now employs over 200 rangers protecting 1.6 million acres of ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania.

Brandt’s photographs can be viewed in many ways. When photographing animals, Brandt used a normal camera lens instead of a telephoto lens, requiring him to get up close to his subjects. Taking the resulting portraits to places that have been transformed into quarries, factories and landfills as a result of encroaching human activity and consumption of natural resources leads to a greater understanding of the environmental degradation for the viewer. The photographs also depict how it is not just the habitats of animals that are under threat – people’s living environments are in danger as well. ”The photographs are my lament to a world that is inevitably, tragically disappearing,” Nick Brandt said already in 2004.