Fortitude

Fortitude is a portrait of Baraka, the blind black rhinoceros who lived at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

I photographed him directly from the front, allowing the shape of his horn to become the defining feature of the frame.

From this perspective, everything feels stripped back - the texture of his skin, the symmetry of his face and the horn rising through the centre of the photograph.

There is an extraordinary physical presence to a black rhino at close range, but what stayed with me about Baraka was his individuality.

His blindness formed part of his story, but it never felt like the only thing that defined him.

Fortitude is a portrait about presence and resilience, an attempt to capture the strength of an individual animal without reducing him to the challenges he had faced.