Paraguay River, Cáceres, Mato Grosso, Brazil, 2015. All photos by Mustafah Abdulaziz
This article originally appeared on VICE Germany
In 2011, American photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz got to researching how different cultures perceive water, the exploitation this leads to, and the challenges we face to preserve our planet's most vital resource. A year later, he started traveling around the world to shoot relevant stories. Today, his body of work covers eight countries on four continents, and is supported by Water Aid, Earth Watch, WWF, and the UN.
Abdulaziz's striking images look at the fragility of life but, more importantly, they hold up a mirror to how our individual behavior affects the collective's quality of life. To mark the UN's World Water Day, I caught up with the photographer before the opening of his new exhibition in London. We went through a series of previously unseen images and talked about his groundbreaking work.
VICE: Your project has so far covered eight countries, but let's start with China and India. What do you think it is about the images from these two places that makes them work so well together?
Mustafah Abdulaziz: I traced and tracked one river across many different parts of both countries—the Ganges and the Yangtze. This allowed for a huge amount of insight into how people behave towards their water resources—whether that's to do with religion, local industry, transportation, or urbanization. That's what the project is really about: how we interact with water, regardless of our race or country. Whatever the river, there were repetitive behaviors that were interesting to examine.
What were some of these repetitive behaviors?
Human beings generally interact with water as part of their environment. But we also see water as an object—to be manipulated and used, measured and controlled. The way we control such a vast resource reveals how we believe we should be using our environment—sadly, that behavior tends to be exploitative a lot of the time.
The scale of exploitation in China is massive. But the way people interact with water is way less esoteric than in India, where people abuse the river, while also believing it's holy. I feel the perception of water in China really comes through in one particular image—the photograph of the flowers on top of a glass case displaying a model of the first Yangtze river bridge in Nanjing. That photo is about those values.
A diorama of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge sits beneath the real bridge. Nanjing, China, 2015.
Water doesn't even feature in this image though. They haven't even bothered to paint it in.
Exactly. That detail is what the entire image is really about. My desire was to divide the space so that the viewer might realize how people project their own views upon the Yangtze: The fresh flowers, the idea of making an elaborate diorama that includes a small boat—they've tried to create an inspiring picture but ultimately it's a hollow one. It represents the Chinese fascination with technological growth over the true thing, which needs to be preserved.
It's really interesting to see your more recent work, which focuses on how people behave in environments where water is not being as challenged.
I'm fascinated by the banal—like the act of watering your lawn in a drought. These types of images can be even more powerful against the backdrop of a crisis.
Classic Club golf course. Palm Desert, California, USA, 2015
Are you referring to your work in California? That photo of a ridiculously healthy golf course surrounded by the desert really stuck with me.
Golf courses are interesting because they're places where people meet, so water is something that will always be facilitated. By flying above that golf course in a helicopter, I was able to see how ridiculous that scenario is. I'm also interested in the seeming prosaicness of excessive lawns and flowers outside someone's home; it's a beautiful picture but it's also absurd. I'm not going to knock on someone's door and ask them how much water they use, because in this project it's not important. What is important is that people think that it's okay to do that. They see this behavior as more important than maintaining their environment. That's the concept I'm playing with.
Between 1990 and 2010, 2.3 billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, which must have meant better sanitation, pipe supplies, and protected wells. Have you witnessed this progression and if so, how?
In 2012, I was in Freetown, Sierra Leone, during the cholera outbreak. Every time a case of cholera was reported, it was a group of women volunteers who would be the first to respond. They were local women who had the trust of their community, but they also knew what immediate measures to take in order to prevent the rapid decline in collective health that comes with cholera. It is limited but useful knowledge, and I think it's also incredibly effective—especially if it's amplified by direction from NGOs. It's important to make communities feel empowered—that's what gives individuals the ability to make a difference.
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