The Styx is not just a river but a vast, deathly swamp filling the entire fifth circle of hell. Lake Natron in northern Tanzania does a pretty good job of illustrating Dante’s vision.
Unless you are an alkaline tilapia (Alcolapia alcalica) – an extremophile fish adapted to the harsh conditions – it is not the best place to live. Temperatures in the lake can reach 60 °C, and its alkalinity is between pH 9 and pH 10.5. The lake takes its name from natron, a naturally occurring compound made mainly of sodium carbonate, with a bit of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) thrown in. Here, this has come from volcanic ash, accumulated from the Great Rift valley. Animals that become immersed in the water die become a skeleton.
Calcified fish Eagle
Other than serving as a breeding area for the endangered Lesser Flamingo and as a home to certain kinds of algae and bacteria, Lake Natron is inhospitable to life.
Blood-red from the bacteria that live in it, the salt lake is steaming hot, with temperatures that can reach up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the New Scientist.
Calcified Dove
"Discovering 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. The entire fish eagle was the most surprising and revelatory find," Brandt, who photographed these calcified animals in 2010 and 2012.
"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."
Calcified Bat
"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. "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. Re-animated, alive again in death."
Calcified Swallow
These stunning shots and other photographs can be found in Nick Brandt's new book, Across the Ravaged Land. The title is the "third and final volume in Brandt's trilogy of books documenting the disappearing natural world and animals of East Africa," according to the photographer's.
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