ARTCO Galleries are proud to announce a solo presentation of the world-renowned photographer, artist and activist Gideon Mendel at Photo London.

Mendel’s forty years of socially engaged photographic practice amount to a profound act of witnessing. His partisan projects are made with the intention to be of use, to both record the world we live in, and also to change it. The resulting photographs feature people from some of the poorest and wealthiest communities on the planet, at the moment of disaster all equally vulnerable to the floods and flames that envelop them.

The fundamental elements of fire and water become a levelling factor bringing Mendel’s subjects together in visual solidarity as they gaze directly at the camera, demanding the viewers close consideration of man-made global warming. In these devastated landscapes reality can seem inverted. With surreal reflections and ghostly charred remnants, we see the impressions of these climate events on both intimate personal spaces and areas of natural beauty. There is often an eerily precise symmetry to be found within the chaos.

Artco will showcase prints from the multiple narrative threads of Gideon Mendel’s highly acclaimed Drowning World and Burning World projects which capture the human experience and physical impacts of climate change.

Recognized as one of the world’s leading contemporary photographers, Mendel’s intimate style of image-making and long-term commitment to socially engaged projects has earned him international acclaim. Born in Johannesburg in 1959, he studied Psychology and African History at the University of Cape Town. He began photographing in the 1980s, during the final years of apartheid. It was this work as a "struggle photographer" that first brought his work to global attention. In the early 1990s he moved to London, continuing to respond to global social issues, with a major focus on HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa but expanding worldwide during the last twenty years.

Since 2007, Mendel has been working on Drowning World, his long-term art and advocacy project about flooding that is a personal response to climate change. Solo shows of Drowning World have been shown at many galleries and public installations around the word, including Les Recontres de la Photographie in Arles.

Amongst many accolades, Mendel has won the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, six World Press Photo Awards, first prize in the Pictures of the Year competition, a POY Canon Photo Essayist Award, and the Amnesty International Media Award for Photojournalism. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet Award (Disorder) for Drowning World. In 2016 he was the first recipient of The Pollock-Krasner Foundation’s "Pollock Prize for Creativity" and also received the Jury Prize of the 2016 Greenpeace Photo Award.

Gideon Mendel (*1959) has worked for many leading magazines, including National Geographic, Geo, and The Guardian Weekend Magazine. His first book, A Broken Landscape: HIV & AIDS in Africa, was published in 2001. Since then he has produced a number of photographic advocacy projects, working with prominent NGOs, including The Global Fund, Médecins Sans Frontières, Treatment Action Campaign, Action Aid, the Terrene Higgins Trust, UNICEF, Christian Aid, and Concern Worldwide.

Artco freut sich, Werke des bekannten Fotografen, Künstlers und Aktivisten Gideon Mendel auf der diesjährigen Photo London in einer Solo Show zu präsentieren.

Seit 2007 bereist Mendel Gegenden auf der ganzen Welt, die von aktuellen Klimakatastrophen betroffen sind, von den schrecklichen Bränden in Australien bis hin zu den katastrophalen Überschwemmungen in vielen Ländern - wie auch im Jahr 2021 in Deutschland - auf nahezu allen Kontinenten. Die dort entstandenen Fotografien zeigen Menschen aus einigen der ärmsten und reichsten Orte der Welt, die im Moment der Katastrophe doch alle gleichermaßen anfällig für Überschwemmungen und Feuersbrünste sind.

Die wesentlichen Elemente Feuer und Wasser werden zu einem Gleichheitsfaktor, der Mendels Motive in visueller Solidarität zusammenbringt. Seine direkt in die Kamera blickenden Protagonisten fordern den Betrachter dazu auf, diese von Menschen verursachte globale Erwärmung des Planenten als existenziell bedrohliches Problem wahrzunehmen. In seinen Aufnahmen von zerstörter Umwelt kann die Wirklichkeit jedoch anders erscheinen. Surreale Reflexionen und gespenstisch verkohlte Überreste verleihen den Bilddokumenten dieser Ereignisse - sowohl von intimen persönlichen Räumen als auch Landschaften - eine besondere natürliche Ästhetik. Es entsteht eine unheimlich anmutende exakte Symmetrie im Chaos.

Artco zeigt in London Fotoarbeiten aus den verschiedenen Werkzyklen von Gideon Mendels vielbeachteten Projekten Drowning World und Burning World, die die menschliche Erfahrung und die physischen Auswirkungen des Klimawandels festhalten.