Fusing art and activism, Nick Brandt focuses on the animals that roam Tanzania and Kenya, capturing their majesty in monumental, black-and-white and sepia-toned photographs—as well as fighting for their preservation, along with the conservationist Richard Bonham, through their Big Life Foundation. He fell in love with East Africa in 1995, while directing Michael Jackson’s “Earth Song” music video. In 2000, he returned to photograph the elephants, lions, and other animals populating the region and realized that they were being ravaged. As he describes, “I wanted to create a last testament for these extraordinary animals in these extraordinary places. What I didn’t imagine is that the destruction of those animals would escalate to the degree that it did.” Brandt eschews telephoto lenses and shoots with a film-based camera, capturing their "spirit” in his photographs, which implicitly ask: what happens when they disappear?