The big picture: the fading of hope in post-apartheid South Africa

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Gideon Mendel’s powerful, water-damaged image from 1980s Johannesburg speaks to the deterioration of memory

In 1990, when the photographer Gideon Mendel left his native South Africa for London, he deposited a number of boxes in his friend’s garage in Johannesburg for safekeeping. These boxes contained, among other things, negatives and transparencies from Mendel’s harrowing first few years as a photojournalist during the struggle against apartheid in the mid-80s.

Over the next three decades, Mendel became renowned for his intimate, socially engaged photography, documenting the effects of the HIV/Aids crisis and climate breakdown. For one project, from his Drowning World series, he has gathered nearly 2,000 water-damaged family photographs picked up on his journeys through flooded communities in the US, India and elsewhere.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2szowQz

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