Drowning world - by Gideon Mendel
Gideon Mendel is a world-renowned photographer, artist and activist. His forty years of socially engaged photographic practice amount to a profound act of witnessing. His partisan projects are made with the intention to be of use, to both record the world we live in, and also to change it.
With compassion and visual ingenuity he has captured the human experience behind some of the most significant issues facing his generation; from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to the tragedy and hope of HIV/AIDS through to our global climate emergency.
For the last sixteen years, capturing the human experience and physical impacts of the global climate emergency has been his focus, with his Drowning World and Burning World projects weaving complex narrative threads to depict it. Showing catastrophic floods and the aftermath of wildfires Mendel takes us into the lives of the affected individuals as they navigate the devastation in their wake, and comprehend a profoundly altered landscape.
He began his career as a traditional documentary photographer but driven by the imperatives of the subjects he confronts, his work has consistently evolved. The transition from black and white to color, along with the incorporation of conceptual and collaborative elements were all informed by his consistent endeavor to make images that work as visual activism. He has never been content to stay wedded to one photographic genre; throughout his career he has been pushing at the limits of photographic practice, challenging himself and his audience to breach boundaries and expectations.
In Mendel’s later work, his engagement with climate issues, portraiture has become his central narrative device. Engaging with his subjects in flooded or burnt landscapes they are not disempowered victims in the photographic encounter. His camera records their dignity and resilience, despite the personal catastrophe that they face. Their direct and sometimes unsettling gaze is a challenge to the viewer, questioning our communal culpability for their plight.
Mendel's climate change portraits are complemented by works that mine the surrounding details: the flood lines, the floating detritus and the scorched objects that are dislodged from their origin stories – damaged, warped and melted, then isolated and reconstituted, again through Mendel’s photographic attention. Amongst many awards Mendel has received the inaugural Jackson Pollock Prize for Creativity, the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, the Greenpeace Photo Award, the Amnesty International Media Award, and six World Press Awards. He was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2015 and 2019.
His photographs have been utilized in climate protests in collaboration with organizations such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays For The Future and Greenpeace.
Learn more at Gideon Mendel's website.