Gideon Mendel: Fire/Flood
November 25th, 2022
By Louis Barnard @louis.s.barnard
During a career spanning almost 40 years, South African photographer Gideon Mendel has tackled some of the most critical socio-political concerns of our time. The images he produces are intimate and sensitive, calling our attention to the gravity of their context. Walking the lines between photojournalism, art and activism, his photographs are as impactful in gallery settings as they are in tabloids or on placards held aloft at protests.
Mendel began his career in 1984 in Apartheid South Africa, documenting the brutal injustices wrought by that regime for a local paper. Mendel bore witness to widespread violence, countless funerals and the despair of a people; it is no surprise this greatly affected him and his work. Speaking retrospectively on his Struggle series Mendel has said, “Looking back now, I see that I was trying to make sense of this turbulent period… and the experience has strongly influenced by approach to photography ever since.”
Amjad Ali Laghari, Goth Bawal Khan village, Sindh Province, Pakistan September 2022. - From the series Drowning World © Gideon Mendel
Over the course of his distinguished career, he has documented the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa and worked in the infamous ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais. However, Mendel’s largest body of work addresses the impacts of climate change. As much as his approach might have changed, the underlying mission has not: to give a voice to the marginalised and the unheard through the visual language of photography.
Since 2007, with his Drowning World project, Mendel has directed his lens towards communities destroyed by the floods that are occurring with increasing frequency across the world. Building on this body work, he travelled to Australia in 2020 to document the damage of the unprecedented “megafires” that scorched the landscape, and in doing so began the Burning World project. Viewed alongside one another, these projects provide a sobering perspective of the world we inhabit.
Gurjeet Dhanoa, Rock Creek, Superior, Colorado, USA March 2022. - From the series Burning World © Gideon Mendel
Climate change is one of the foremost issues facing our generation and it can’t be easy producing work on such a divisive, tragic and word-altering subject. Yet, through his intimate form of image-making, Mendel grounds climate change in the human experience and invites us to engage with it on a personal level.
“My subjects have taken the time – in a situation of great distress – to engage the camera, looking out at us from their inundated homes and devastated surroundings.”
This is best exemplified in the two portrait series, Submerged Portraits and Portraits in Ashes, that emerged from the Drowning and Burning World projects respectively. These consist of a series of images taken of people in the ruins of their homes and communities in the quiet moments following floods and wildfires. With the proliferation of “disaster porn” plastered across the media, it seems odd that Mendel opts not to capture the chaos and devastation of these calamitous events as they occur, nor the painful processes of recovery and reconciliation to come.
João Pereira de Araújo, Taquari District, Rio Branco, Brazil March 2015. - From the series Drowning World © Gideon Mendel
He chooses, instead, to set his work in the immediate aftermath of floods and wildfires, during the period of surreal stillness and calm where both his subjects and settings seem to be suspended in time. By doing so, he avoids presenting his subjects as helpless, pitiful victims of chance. Rather, the images are framed around the subjects with a considered sensitivity, giving agency and power to the people at their centre.
As the artist says: “My subjects have taken the time – in a situation of great distress – to engage the camera, looking out at us from their inundated homes and devastated surroundings. They are showing the world the calamity that has befallen them. They are not victims in this exchange: the camera records their dignity and resilience. They bear witness to the brutal reality that the poorest people on the planet almost always suffer the most from climate change.”
Jenni Bruce, Upper Brogo, New South Wales, Australia January 15/2020. - From the series Burning World © Gideon Mendel
In an interview with Musee Magazine in September last year, Mendel referred to the sense of order he achieves in his images, “I’m operating in chaotic situations but I think I’m trying to create formal structured images.” Though it seems counterintuitive for a photographer to conceptualise their shots of ravaged landscapes and their inhabitants in this way, this is where Mendel departs from traditional photojournalism: composing images that place the subject at the very centre, framed by the wreckage of their homes and communities without being swallowed up or crushed.
“I’m operating in chaotic situations but I think I’m trying to create formal structured images.”
Mendel gives power back to his subjects. He gives a sense that they have reclaimed control by placing them in the epicentre of these ruined scenes. They command the image, drawing our gaze to meet theirs, demanding our attention - demanding action. This raw human contact pulls the viewer into that world, into that moment, eliciting the kind of felt emotional response that Mendel is so good at producing in his work, which challenges us. There is a unity in the subjects’ appeal. The poses and expressions they adopt are similar, despite the photographs being taken thousands of miles and often several years apart from one another.
Muhammad Chuttal, Khaipur Nathan Shah, Sindh Province, Pakistan, October 2022. - From the series Drowning World © Gideon Mendel
Gideon Mendel’s exhibition, Fire / Flood, opens Friday the 25th of November and runs until May 2023, in the Soho Photography Quarter, the recently launched open-air exhibition space outside The Photographers’ Gallery. Works shown include pieces from Drowning World and Burning World, alongside a new film piece.
Kevin Goss, Greenville, California, USA, October 2021. - From the series Burning World © Gideon Mendel
About Gideon Mendel
Working with both stills and video, Gideon Mendel's intimate style of image-making and long-term commitment to socially engaged projects has earned international recognition.
Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1959, he began photographing in the 1980s, during the final years of apartheid. This experience as a "struggle photographer", documenting the brutality of the South African state's response to peaceful protest, marked him on some level and for much of his subsequent career his focus has been on responding to the key global issues facing his generation.
For the Drowning World and Burning World series, he worked in the UK, India, Haiti, Pakistan, Australia, Thailand, Nigeria, Germany, The Philippines, Brazil, Bangladesh, the USA, France, Australia, Greece and Canada.
Mendel has won the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, the Amnesty International Media Award, the Greenpeace Photo Award and he has been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2015 (Disorder) and 2019 (Hope). In 2016 he was the first recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation's Pollock Prize for Creativity.
Mendel’s recent flood response journeys were made with the support of UNOCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs).