Projects
DROWNING WORLD
Gideon Mendel
London, United Kingdom
Project Start: 10/05/2012
Project End: 05/06/2012
Category: Visual Art and Installations
Tags: Exhibition, Flood, Photos
Link: http://gideonmendel.com/drowningworld/
Media Link: http://vimeo.com/41813519
Gideon Mendel writes, from his web site:
DROWNING WORLD was an exhibition that showed at the East Wing Galleries at Somerset House from May 10th to June 5th 2012.
It presented my ongoing global project about flooding. Since 2007 I have visited six countries (The UK, India, Haiti, Pakistan, Australia and Thailand) that have been devastated by massive flooding. I have done this as an attempt to visually address the issue of climate change.
I chose to shoot on film, using old Rolleiflex cameras. The heart of the project is a series of portraits of flood victims at their homes within the landscape of their own personal calamity. Making these images often involved returning with them through waist high floodwaters so they could show their circumstances to the world.
My intention is to depict them as individuals, not as nameless statistics. Coming from disparate parts of the world, their faces show us their linked vulnerability despite the vast differences in their lives and circumstances.
On my more recent trips I also recorded video footage to make two video pieces to accompany the still images.
All images: Gideon Mendel