Making Victim Silences Present

On November 8, 2021, Gideon Mendel, a photographer who speaks a modest British accent, came to the Hance Auditorium of Davidson College to tell us the stories of the photograph series he has dedicated more than a decade to—the Drowning World and the Fire.

The Drowning World

The Drowning World series is a set of photographs of flooded houses and their owners taken from 2007 to 2018 in thirteen countries in an effort to reveal the real damage climate change is inflicting on people around the globe. Mr. Mendel clarified that since some lower-class houses in poorer regions built with branches and mud were destroyed, the pictures focus more on the relatively wealthier class. In the photographs, the victims of the floods stand right in front of their houses, gazing at the camera with different emotions: helplessness, fear, sorrow, desperation, confusion, hope, resilience, and determination. Mr. Mendel told his audience that when photographing in Nigeria in 2012, a woman refused to accept the 25 dollars reward he offered but instead requested him to show the world what is happening with his pictures (figure 1). This is not only for that Nigerian woman, but every individual, no matter nationalities or wealth, who stand in front of their flooded house to showcase the ongoing and worsening misery. The Drowning World series underscores the visual solidarity of different people across the world against climate deterioration, and it urges the world to realize we are ONE to suffer from global warming and we are ONE to solve it.

Sidenote: Mr. Mendel sequenced the images through water levels to avoid any bias in sequencing (gender, race, class, etc.).

Fire Series

Mr. Mendel introduced us to another of his project, the Fire Series, which is his record of the destruction caused by the 2018 California Fire. This project is similar to the Drowning World in that they both portray the victims and their destructed houses but differ in that the chaotic ruins of fire forced Mr. Mendel to compose the images with careful positioning instead of making the victims stand in front of the houses. It magnifies the more destructive and horrifying effects of the wildfire. In the lecture, Mr. Mendel also brought to us the objects retrieved from the ashes. Staring at the objects marked by fire enabled an intimacy far beyond that from photographs, as if you could imagine the process of deformation that the objects had been through (figure 2 melted wine bottle). Again, the Fire Series is Mr. Mendel’s other project to urge people to realize the grave repercussion of global warming and to solve the problem as ONE.