Gideon Mendel’s Fire Flood exhibition showing at the Soho Photography Quarter
Each evening, from dusk, a newly commissioned film will be showing communities affected by fire and flood.
A photographer has travelled to 13 countries to capture the human experience of the climate catastrophe.
The free open-air exhibition space, Soho Photography Quarter (SPQ) in Ramillies Place, Oxford Circus, will be showing Gideon Mendel’s Fire Flood exhibition until October 31.
Works from his Drowning World and Burning World series of photographs, alongside a new moving image will all be on display.
Shown for the first time in the UK, Mendel’s most recent portraits were shot in Bayelsa State, Nigeria and in Sindh Province, Pakistan.
Since August 2022, both regions experienced unprecedented rain and were devastated by the worst floods in memory.
Countless structures and buildings were destroyed and millions left homeless.
Visiting these communities months after the flooding Mr Mendel found that the water levels remained high, still filling people’s homes.
Mr Mendel’s images record the lasting effect of this damage in a deeply intimate and precise way.
The Burning World series is Mr Mendel’s response to the rise of wildfires around the world, as global temperatures increase.
Since the start of 2020, he has documented the aftermath of fires that have destroyed homes, killed numerous people and burnt millions of acres of land.
Mendel chooses not to document the burning flames, but rather seeks out the traces left behind.
Fire Flood will also include images that will have been taken in Nigeria less than two weeks before the display opens, giving a visceral sense of the global climate emergency.
The exhibition will be free to the public from November 25 at the SPQ.
Picture: Abdul Ghafoor, Mohd Yousof Naich School, Sindh Province, Pakistan, October 2022. From the series Drowning World Picture: Gideon Mendel
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