12:30-13:15
Sunday 18 June
Ideas on the Green,
Planet Positive
Gideon Mendel is an award-winning photographer whose internationally acclaimed projects serve as a powerful reminder of the impact of the climate crisis on the planet. Since 2007, Gideon has made twenty trips to document floods in thirteen countries, and since 2020 is also documenting the aftermath of the increasing number of wildfires that are devastating lives.
Gideon will talk about the Submerged Portraits and Portraits in Ashes sequences of portraits in his Drowning Worlds and Burning Worlds projects which bear witness to a shared human experience of climate catastrophe that transcends geographical, cultural and economic divides.
“I began work on Drowning World in 2007 when I photographed two floods that occurred within weeks of each other, one in the UK and the other in India. I was deeply struck by the contrasting impacts of these floods, and the linked vulnerability that seemed to unite my subjects… As the project has developed, the ‘conversation’ created by juxtaposing images from different floods in different countries at different times, side-by-side has become increasingly interesting for me. The lives and fates of these individuals become clearly linked and they stand in solidarity amidst a deepening visual complexity.”
Gideon Mendel
Gideon Mendel’s films ‘Proof and Portents – Flood: Fire’ and ‘Drowning World. The Water Chapters’ will be shown outdoors in the Planet Positive zone in Kensington Gardens over the festival weekend