Join The Community Library for a conversation with photographer Nick Brandt and local gallery owner L’Anne Gilman as they discuss Brandt’s latest photographic series SINK / RISE.

SINK / RISE is the third chapter of “The Day May Break,” Brandt’s ongoing global series portraying those impacted by environmental destruction and climate change. This chapter focuses on South Pacific Islanders impacted by rising oceans from climate change. Photographed in-camera underwater in the ocean off the coast of the Fijian islands, the local people in these images are representatives of the many people whose homes, land and livelihoods will be lost in the coming decades as the water rises.

“Although they are several meters below the surface, the subjects of Nick Brandt’s mesmerizing photographs do not float or swim. Incredibly, they sit on sofas, stand on chairs, use seesaws, and pose in ways they might on land. The effect is otherworldly, as though the familiar laws of physics have stalled in this strange, liminal zone between land and sea. Sit with these photographs and the others in the series, and the subject’s expressions will change like water. Stoicism becomes resignation. Frustration becomes resolve. In their pensive faces, we can read tenderness, grief, and perseverance,” writes Zoe Lescaze, in the foreword to SINK / RISE.

Reception to follow at the gallery, where the exhibition of SINK / RISE photographs will be on display.

Image: Serafina at Table, courtesy of Nick Brandt.