The Echo of Our Voices by Nick Brandt

THE ECHO OF OUR VOICES is the fourth Chapter of The Day May Break, a global series featuring first humans and animals, and now just humans, impacted by climate change and environmental degradation and destruction.

The photographs feature rural families, who originally fled the civil war in Syria, now living in Jordan, which is considered the second most water-scarce country in the world. Living lives of continuous displacement due to climate change, the Syrians are forced to move their homes up to several times a year, moving to where there is available agricultural work, to wherever there has been sufficient rainfall to enable crops to grow.

This chapter is very different to the previous chapters, both visually and emotionally: a show of connection and strength in the face of adversity, that when all else is lost you still have each other.

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


Key crew members on this project :
Creative collaborators (choreography & a lot more): Elyse Blennerhassett and Sandra Jelly
Families Researcher/Co-ordinator/Translator: Lubna Al-Ajeeb
Producer: Harry Klunder

This chapter was partially funded byGallerie d’Italia Museum in Turin, Italy. An exhibition of all four chapters at the museum, the largest and most comprehensive yet, is scheduled for April 2026.

The first commercial exhibition of this work opens on September 12 at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, and runs until November 9.

Also showing in this exhibition will be photographs from SINK / RISE, The Day May Break, Chapter Three, photographed underwater in Fiji in 2023, with local people that are representatives of the many South Pacific Islanders whose homes, land and livelihoods will be lost in the coming decades as the water rises from climate change.








The Day May Break
The Day May Break (2021-2024) is an ongoing global series portraying people and animals that have been impacted by environmental degradation and destruction.

Chapter One was photographed in Zimbabwe and Kenya in 2020, Chapter Two in Bolivia in 2022.

In these chapters, the people in the photos have all been badly affected by climate change, from extreme droughts to floods that destroyed their homes and livelihoods. The photographs were taken at several sanctuaries and conservancies.

The animals are almost all long-term rescues, victims of everything from habitat destruction to wildlife trafficking. These animals can never be released back into the wild. As a result, they are almost all habituated to humans, and so it was safe for human strangers to be close to them, photographed in the same frame at the same time.

SINK / RISE, The Day May Break, Chapter Three, was photographed in Fiji in 2023.
This third chapter of The Day May Break focuses on South Pacific Islanders impacted by rising oceans from climate change. The people in these photos, photographed underwater in the ocean, are representatives of the many people whose homes, land and livelihoods will be lost in the coming decades as the water rises. All the people in these photographs are photographed in-camera underwater.

HOME: The Day May Break, Chapter Four was photograped in Jordan in 2024.
Jordan is considered the second most water-scarce country in the world. The photographs feature mostly rural Syrian refugee families living in Jordan that have been seriously impacted by the effects of climate change. They are forced to move their homes up to several times a year, moving to where there is available agricultural work, to wherever there has been sufficient rainfall to enable crops to grow.

The photographs were taken in the deserts of southern Jordan. In almost all the photographs, the people are family members. The stacks of boxes that the families sit and stand together on aim skyward - a verticality implying more sense of strength or defiance - and provide pedestals for those that in our society are typically unseen and unnoticed. Not generals or politicians of history, but human beings equally worthy of their place in the world.

Brandt has had solo gallery and museum shows around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Stockholm, Paris and Los Angeles.

All the series are published in book form.
The Day May Break
The Day May Break, Chapter Two
Sink / Rise, The Day May Break: Chapter Three

Born and raised in London, where he originally studied Painting and Film, Brandt now lives in the southern Californian mountains.

In 2010, Brandt co-founded Big Life Foundation, a non-profit in Kenya/ Tanzania that employ more than 350 local rangers protecting 1.6 million acres of the Amboseli/Kilimanjaro ecosystem.
Exclusive Interview with Nick Brandt About The Day May Break
www.nickbrandt.com
@nickbrandtphotography