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PHOTO ESSAY

Drowning World

Photographer and activist Gideon Mendel has for the past 11 years turned up at flood zones around the world, from Pakistan to Brazil, Haiti to Australia, Thailand to Nigeria, the United States and France. What has emerged is a body of work titled ‘Drowning World’, made up of narrative threads in Submerged Portraits, Floodlines and Watermark.
MC-Gideon Mendel-Ufrieda Drowning World (Photo supplied)
Gideon Mendel
By Gideon Mendel
20 Sep 2019
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Gideon Mendel’s images exert power through unflinching confrontation, and eerie stillness and quiet. It comes from Mendel’s practised precision and deliberate composition in ordering horror and beauty in these waterscapes where the natural order of things has been inverted.

Maverick Citizen is publishing some of Mendel’s images on the day of the Global Strike. Read his interview with Ufrieda Ho here.

Gideon Mendel is represented by ARTCO in South Africa.

The Watermark series started when Gideon Mendel salvaged a waterlogged photo album in a flood zone. His work made up from these collected images are exhibited around the world including pictured above in Kyoto in April 2018. (Photo: supplied)
The Watermark series started when Mendel salvaged a waterlogged photo album in a flood zone. His work made up from these collected images are exhibited around the world including pictured above in Kyoto in April 2018. (Photo supplied)
Photographer Gideon Mendel’s work is increasingly being used in different forms of protest against climate change inertia. At the Landskrona Festival portraits from his Drowning World series are displayed in water, bringing home the stark reality of our burning planet. Pictured is Anchalee Koyama that Gideon Mendel photographed in the Taweewattana District in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2011. (Photo: supplied)
Mendel’s work is increasingly being used in different forms of protest against climate change inertia. At the Landskrona Festival, portraits from his Drowning World series are displayed in water, bringing home the stark reality of our burning planet. Pictured is Anchalee Koyama that Gideon Mendel photographed in the Taweewattana District in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2011. (Photo supplied)
Climate change realities are made real to a visitor to the Landskrona Festival in Sweden in September 2018. Seen here is Gideon Mendel’s portrait of JB Singh in Kashmir photographed in floods in October 2014. (Photo: supplied)
Climate change realities are made real to a visitor to the Landskrona Festival in Sweden in September 2018. Seen here is Mendel’s portrait of JB Singh in Kashmir photographed in floods in October 2014. (Photo supplied)
A man visiting Mendel’s exhibition at WAM (Wits Arts Museum) in Johannesburg in 2017. (Photo: supplied)
A man visiting Mendel’s exhibition at WAM (Wits Arts Museum) in Johannesburg in 2017. (Photo supplied)
Gideon Mendel’s Floodlines series shows the surreal inversion of the reality of everyday life as floods change lives forever. (Photo: supplied)
Above and below: Mendel’s Floodlines series shows the surreal inversion of the reality of everyday life as floods change lives forever. (Photos supplied)

The intersection of art and activism has always been how Mendel has approached his photography. His ongoing work showing the impact of floods were part of an exhibition and awareness campaign against climate change when COP21 Climate Change Conference was held in Paris is December 2015. (Photo: supplied)
The intersection of art and activism has always been how Mendel has approached his photography. His ongoing work showing the impact of floods were part of an exhibition and awareness campaign against climate change when COP21 Climate Change Conference was held in Paris is December 2015. (Photo: supplied)
Everyday objects altered forever by the floods become both horror and beauty through Mendel’s lens. They’re the pleasing patterns and symmetry, also the testament to destruction of floods as extreme weather conditions become the norm. (Photo: Gideon Mendel)
Everyday objects altered forever by the floods become both horror and beauty through Mendel’s lens. They’re the pleasing patterns and symmetry, also the testament to the destruction of floods as extreme weather conditions become the norm. (Photo: Gideon Mendel)
Everyday objects altered forever by the floods become both horror and beauty through Mendel’s lens. They’re the pleasing patterns and symmetry, also the testament to destruction of floods as extreme weather conditions become the norm. (Photo: Gideon Mendel)
(Photo: Gideon Mendel)
Homes and lives all over the world are becoming casualties to climate change. Above is the eerie reflection of a front door to a home in Somerset in the United Kingdom, photographed in September 2017. below is a home under water in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, France, photographed in February 2018. (Photo: Gideon Mendel)
Homes and lives all over the world are becoming casualties to climate change. Above is the eerie reflection of a front door to a home in Somerset in the United Kingdom, photographed in September 2017. Below is a home underwater in Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, France, photographed in February 2018. (Photo: Gideon Mendel)

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