Mercredi 21 Septembre 2016 10:52:37 par Alix Joly dans Expositions

The Syngenta Photography Award is pleased to announce the launch of Water: California, by Mustafah Abdulaziz, the Professional Commission first prize winner for the Award’s second edition.

The latest installment of the Berlin-based photographer’s acclaimed Water series focuses on the drought crisis in California and will debut at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC during FotoDC this November (12 – 20).

Compelled by the United Nations’ 2010 report, which revealed that nearly 3.4 billion people across the globe will face water scarcity by 2025, Abdulaziz began documenting the impact of the crisis on a number of different cultures, in 2011. Supported by WaterAid, the United Nations and VSCO, his photographic series has captured the challenge of water scarcity facing populations in India, Pakistan, Ethi- opia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Nigeria, Brazil and China.

Responding to the Award’s theme of Scarcity-Waste, Abdulaziz’s winning commission project proposal looks to the American state of California, where relentless drought has exacerbated the complex relationship between the dire need for water to ensure livelihoods, and the natural resource at work.

“The drought in California represents the latest and most conceptual chapter of the fifteen-year global project Water. To this day the state remains in turmoil with dwindling water supplies, high demand and an inability to enact solutions that are sustainable and reflective of their future. These photographs are not a reportage of drought, but rather, an examination of the ways in which human beings exist within the extreme margins of water. It is in this space that our structures, behaviour and perspectives are called into question,” explains Abdulaziz.

“The Professional Commission of the Syngenta Photography Award has provided me the opportunity to create a new, critical chapter of my ongoing project on Water. The challenges of water, now and in the future, require time and freedom to examine. This Award gave me the necessary independence and support to turn my attention to California, an American state still within the grip of a record, multi- year drought. I was able to continue my long-term study on the relationship between man and nature, taking the project Water in an intriguing new direction.”

The exhibition comprises of 15 large-scale lightboxes that reveal how water is both desperately sought after and taken for granted. With the aid of a US$25,000 grant from the Syngenta Photography Award, the photographer spent two months travelling around the Western American state exploring how water is distributed and redistributed – exposing how water misuse is putting future generations at risk.

To illustrate California’s natural and man-made terrain, Abdulaziz took to the sky to produce a series of dramatic aerial shots of uniform towns, vast expanses of open water and endless arid land. He photographed dams, back gardens, beach trips and palm tree forests; alongside humanistic scenes of sun-worshipping bathers in crystalline swimming pools. With this, he highlights the challenge of scarcity and waste and the changing attitudes towards one of the world’s most sought after and important natural resources.