Auckland Festival of Photography presents Gideon Mendel’s exhibition called Submerged Portraits.
It is a portrait series as a provocation of the global conscience.
This set of intimate portraits of flood victims is at the core of the Drowning World project.
Mendel’s subjects address the camera looking out from their devastated environments and inundated homes.
The poses may seem conventional but their confrontational gazes challenge us to consider their context of catastrophe across cultures and time.
Coming from disparate parts of the world they reveal their shared vulnerability and linked exposure to climate change despite vast differences in lives and circumstances.
Since 2007, using stills and video, Mendel has been working on Drowning World; an art and advocacy project about flooding.
October 6, 2022
