"Drowning World" Photographer Has Striking Images Of Extreme Flood Victims

A lot of the scientists are telling us that among the many awful things climate change is causing is extreme storms and floods.

It isn't all heat and fires (See: Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.)

The floods worldwide do see to be coming fast and furiously, seeming striking somewhere every week.

 Photographer Gideon Mendel has been going to many of these floods since 2007, taking him to places as diverse as Brazil, India, the United States, Britain, Nigeria and Thailand.

Mendel calls his project "a hazy middle groud between documentary and art, with a bit of activism thrown in."

He said most people think if climate change as involving distant glaciers melting or a stranded polar bear in the Arctic somewhere.

But Mendel says he wants to show that people are being affected in profound ways by climate change right now.

To do that, he poses people standing in the flood waters in or near their homes. He has them face the camera with pretty intense stares - as if to accuse all of us of contributing to the climate change that has devastated their lives.


These are the most effective photos that I've seen in his collection, I think. The expressions on the flood victims' faces are this terrible mix of pain, anger, sadness, resignation and defiance.

You can see a couple examples of these portraits in this post.  (Click on the images to make them bigger and really get a good look at them.)

Mendel also has many photos of water lines in homes, and images of people's personal photographs ruined by floodwater.  

Of course, each flood Mendel documents have many causes. But climate change is tending to make floods worse, so chances are the inundations he's showing are worse than what they otherwise would have been

H/T Washington Post for the this.

Here is a video of Mendel further explaining his project and showing more of his incredible images.