Water

Over the course of 15 years, photographer Magnum photographer Ian Berry travelled the globe to document the inextricable links between landscape, life and water. This new book brings together a selection of the resulting images which collectively tell the story of man’s complex relationship with water—at a time when climate change demonstrates just how precariously water and life are intertwined. The photographs in the book illustrate the dichotomy of our relationship with water—the role it has in ancient religious rituals and in building communities, to its exploitation and the devastating result of too little or too much water. They depict Hindus bathing in the Ganges, shellfish-gatherers in coastal Spain; polluted sea surrounding oil infrastructure in Baku, Azerbaijan; fishermen in Greenland navigating melting ice in the ocean; landscapes transformed to dustbowls by drought in South Africa and to villages made into islands by flooding in Bangladesh. It is was not Berry’s intention to make a political book, nor an authoritative catalogue of mans’ interactions with water, but instead to share the most memorable stories from his assignments that illustrate how water shapes our lives and what the future may hold.