NEW SERIES / BOOK / EXHIBITIONS 

THE ECHO OF OUR VOICES

THE DAY MAY BREAK

CHAPTER FOUR

Laila, Zaina and Haroub, Jordan, 2024

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 Syrian families, who fled the war in Syria, now living in Jordan.

Jordan 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 a strength or defiance - and provide pedestals for those that in our society are typically unseen and unheard.

Partial Funding by Gallerie d'Italia Museum, Turin.

An exhibtion of all four Chapters of The Day May Break, with special emphasis on The Echo of Our Voices, is scheduled at the Museum March-September 2026.

Please go to EXHIBITIONS in the menu for all other Current and Upcoming Exhibitions.

A BOOK of The Echo of Our Voices will be published in September / October 2025. 

"Why do I find myself unable to turn away from these images, or to stop gazing at them? The women stand strong, their bodies dignified, creating a silent language between each other and the rigid cubes that Brandt uses as a stage for the absurd. Girls’ hands disrupt the sense of distress, adding a degree of gentleness to the image, and evoking the tension between the right to express one’s pain and the right to keep silent. 

The images suggest meticulous attention to detail, from consideration of tone and movement of light, to shapes of faces and the direction of the wind; in the end, we find ourselves before a piece as intricate and cohesive as lace. Brandt’s work on the subjects’ gestures, their faces and foreheads, the light in their eyes and the selection of groupings—with the backdrop of mountains and desert, between peak and cave, sand and sky—results in photographs that brim with life, inviting questions while offering no answers. They deftly dismantle our ready-made assumptions and give rise to tomes of questions, floating gently in extended silence. 

How can refugees keep living, unmoored in space and time? The answer is close at hand, and deeply human: Love. Love, while not enough, is an invisible refuge. In these photographs, the arrangements of refugees’ bodies tell tales of sadness, of lives suspended in temporary time. The images speak of absence, yet also of love. Despite shifting meanings of pain, disquiet, and the unknown, Brandt reveals that love is the thread of their survival. 

Each photograph is a painting, and each painting is a small detail in a larger scene of gripping pain the photographs attempt to address. When I stand before them, time itself stands still. 

Each photograph contains a rebellious cry. The images tell us, with solemn dignity: Do not avert your eyes. 

As I live with the photographs and reach the end, I ultimately realize that they contain a secret. These images are not only photographs, they draw from theatre, film, and poetry; they are the daughter of reality. Deeply truthful, and deeply imaginative. Imaginative for the intensity of pain and that silent cry, truthful as they are rooted in the refugees’ reality."

— Samar Yazbek, Author of Where the Wind Calls Home and Planet of Clay 

From the Foreword to The Echo of Our Voices

"Brandt’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."

— Arianna Rinaldo, Curator
From the Introduction to The Echo of Our Voices

An extensive feature on the work was published on CNN in October 2024. Link below:

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/10/climate/syrian-refugee-portraits-cnnphotos/