For the past eighteen years, Gideon Mendel has been dedicated to documenting the impacts of the climate crisis on communities worldwide. Through his projects Drowning World and Burning World, he provides an intimate look into the lives of those most affected, capturing their experiences of loss and the devastation of a changing landscape.
Mendel’s photographs and multimedia installations have appeared in publications and have been exhibited globally in galleries, museums, and photo festivals. His work has also been featured in public art settings, from the Greenpeace stage at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival to large-scale banners in city streets. He has collaborated with organizations such as Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, and Greenpeace, using his imagery to support climate protests.
His work has earned numerous awards, including 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 Photo Awards. He was also shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2015 and 2019.
Mendel spent two decades documenting the global HIV/AIDS crisis, culminating in his first book, A Broken Landscape: HIV & AIDS in Africa (2001). He has since published three more monographs: Dzhangal (2017), The Ward (2017), and Freedom or Death (2019). He is currently working on a fifth book, which brings together his work on fire and flooding.
Mendel studied Psychology and African History at the University of Cape Town. He began his career as a photographer in the 1980s, capturing the final years of apartheid in South Africa.