Īcross the Ravaged Land is the third and final volume in Brandt’s trilogy of books documenting the disappearing animals of eastern Africa. You can read more about his preference for film and his inspiration for this book in a personal essay entitled, I am the Walrus. Brandt only uses two fixed lenses, a 35mm (standard 50mm equivalent) and a 100mm. Each roll of film comes with only 10 shots and there is no zoom, auto-focus, auto-metering, motor drive or image stabilizing lenses. The arresting images below were taken with a medium format Pentax 67II. I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in ‘living’ positions, bringing them back to ‘life’, as it were. The soda and salt causes the creatures to calcify, perfectly preserved, as they dry. The water has an extremely high soda and salt content, so high that it would strip the ink off my Kodak film boxes within a few seconds. No-one knows for certain exactly how they die, but it appears that the extreme reflective nature of the lake’s surface confuses them, and like birds crashing into plate glass windows, they crash into the lake. In short, Lake Natron may well be the creepiest graveyard in history.“I unexpectedly found the creatures – all manner of birds and bats – washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron in Northern Tanzania. Either way, the eerie result is a shoreline littered with statue-like bodies-the calcified remains of dozens of birds and bats that foolishly tried to test the waters. According to one photographer who visited, the levels of concentration were so high it could strip the ink off Kodak film boxes “in seconds.” They might find it difficult to get out if they’ve stayed in too long, or they might be confused by the lake’s appearance as the locals claim. See, Lake Natron is absolutely bursting with soda and salt. Like a demented cross between Medusa and King Midas, it will turn any visitor that overstays its welcome into a creepy fossil. But Lake Natron isn’t content with just killing off whatever life tries to get a toehold in its ash-encrusted waters. With an alkalinity level somewhere between a pH of 9 and 10.5 and a temperature that frequently exceeds 60 ☌ (140 ☏), it could make a good punt for being one of the most inhospitable environments on Earth. Lake Natron isn’t exactly a pleasant place. This effect is due to the extremely high salt and soda content in the water. Any animal that dies in its waters is preserved and later washed up on shore, appearing to be turned to stone.
In the darkest recesses of Tanzania, a quiet lake hides a formidable secret. “Oh, why am I not of stone, like you?” - Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame In A Nutshell
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