These organisms may be evolutionary descendants of animals who lived on the lake before its current chemical environment arose. It appears to contain a stable ecosystem consisting of a population of endangered flamingos, some species of fish, and algae. Re-animated, alive again in death.”ĭespite its inhospitable environment, the lake is not lifeless. “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 notion of portraits of dead animals in the place where they once lived, placed in positions as if alive again in death, was just too compelling to ignore,” Brandt said of his decision to photograph the animals. “There was never any possibility of bending a wing or turning a head to make a better pose - they were like rock,” he said, “so we took them and placed them on branches and rocks just as we found them, always with a view to imagining it as a portrait in death.”Ī fish eagle © Nick Brandt 2013, Courtesy of Hasted Kraeutler Gallery, NY

The creatures, he said, were “rock hard” from the calcification. The entire fish eagle was the most surprising and revelatory find,” Brandt, who photographed these calcified animals in 20, told The Huffington Post in an email Wednesday.

“Discovering these animals washed up along the shoreline of Lake Natron, I thought they were extraordinary - every last tiny detail perfectly preserved down to the tip of a bat’s tongue, the minute hairs on his face.

Lake natron calcified animals