Skira Editore releases Nick Brandt‘s new book: The Echo of Our Voices: The Day May Break: Chapter Four. There is also an exhibition at Hangar Photo Art Center in Brussels. Here are some excerpts from the essay by Arianna Rinaldo.
The Echo of Our Voices, a series of powerful and moving pictures of Syrian families exiled in Jordan, is the fourth chapter of Nick Brandt’s The Day May Break, a ferociously engaged long-term project with which he tackles the urgent matter of climate change on a broad scale and its consequences for people and animals.
With this most recent work, climate issues extend to include their effect on communities that are already vulnerable, as these war refugees are. The urgent themes of the previous chapters are all here, but the elements of conflict, displacement, and belonging are a dramatic addition to the narrative. A series of families are chosen to represent their community. The Jordan desert is the backdrop, with its stark and bone-dry landscape.
In front of a bare and minimalist background where sand and rocks draw the lines, Brandt places the family members in different intertwined forms: couples, siblings, mothers and daughters, husbands and brothers, elders and children sit or stand on cleverly placed boxes, in a harmonious ensemble that resembles a group statue. Every individual becomes a protagonist. The first visual impression is of a dignified sense of connectedness, strength, and presence.
In their daily lives they are struggling, not only because of their refugee status, but also due to climate change and its consequences for their agricultural practice and livelihood. Most are concerned about the impossibility of offering their children a decent future. Many were children themselves when they left their home, escaping the rage and fury of a war that had no mercy.
And then the world forgot about them.
With Nick’s project and their participation in its making they become visible.
They are there, tall and proud.
We see them.
In Nick’s portrayal of these families, I recognize the towering presence of mountains. I feel the resilience nurtured by the stories of these people, by the longing for their homeland, the firmness of their wishes, and the strength of their togetherness.
To create this compact sense of space, Nick uses a simple, humble object: a number of imperfect, handcrafted, sand-washed crates which are variously composed to create a stage on which the scene can take place, the characters can enter their spotlight.
These boxes are the pedestals that elevate each and every individual in their group-like formations.
They are the bricks of their houses that have been destroyed back home and have to be rebuilt again.
They are the makeshift cardboard boxes that shelter this planet’s homeless.
They are the foundation of the future.
They hold their precious dreams.
Nick’s family portraits transcend literal relationships: they forge and renovate a bond that goes beyond blood and flesh, magnificent and sublime and impossible to express with words. How strong are these ties that endure beyond catastrophe, and hang on to hope with such a noble stance? I am in awe.
I can’t take my eyes away from Women with Sleeping Children. Bathed in the beautiful shadows of dusk, it is the embodiment of motherly protection.
You do not have to fear, I am here.
I look out for you, day and night.
I will not abandon you.
Don’t be scared.
Love seems to be the unbreakable force that stands and expands through all these portraits. Individually and as a whole they are an ode to love, an homage to resilience, in a hopeful stance that this powerful feeling can lead these families exactly where they want to go, to the homes they long for.
The Echo of Our Voices is a monument to unlimited aspiration and unwavering kinship, where center stage is held by humans bound by family ties, a fierce destiny, and now a powerful voice that must echo beyond these borders.
Arianna Rinaldo, Edited Extracts from her Introduction to The Echo of Our Voices.
Arianna is curator for the exhibition of The Day May Break, Chapters One-Four, at Gallerie d’Italia Museum in Turin in March 2026.
Book:
Nick Brandt : The Echo of Our Voices: The Day May Break: Chapter Four.
Skira Editore
Essays by Nick Brandt, Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek, and Arianna Rinaldo
12”x15” / 30×38 cm, 70+ photos
https://www.skira-arte.com/products/nick-brandt-the-echo-of-our-voices?variant=51465417556310
https://www.artbook.com/9788857253947.html
Current Exhibition:
Nick Brandt : The Day May Break, Chapters One-Three, with teaser of The Echo of Our Voices, Chapter Four
Until December 21 2025
Hangar Photo Art Center, Brussels
Pl. du Châtelain 18
1050 Ixelles, Belgium
https://www.hangar.art/
