Ep 11 - Gideon Mendel

Gideon Mendel is a world-renowned photographer, artist and activist. His 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. With compassion and visual ingenuity he has captured the human experience behind some of the most significant issues facing his generation; from the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to the tragedy and hope of HIV/AIDS through to our global climate emergency. For the last sixteen years, capturing the human experience and physical impacts of the global climate emergency has been his focus, with his Drowning World and Burning World projects weaving complex narrative threads to depict it. Showing catastrophic floods and the aftermath of wildfires Mendel takes us into the lives of the affected individuals as they navigate the devastation in their wake, and comprehend a profoundly altered landscape. Amongst many awards Mendel has received the inaugural Jackson Pollock Prize for Creativity, the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, the Greenpeace Photo Award, the Amnesty International Media Award, and six World Press Awards. He has also been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2015 and 2019. His photographs have been utilised in climate protests in collaboration with organisations such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays For The Future and Greenpeace.