that and the Water Mark series for Drowning World. With that
this narrow street that’s flooded and it looks like they’re car-
project, I was becoming some sort of visual contemporary ar-
rying their belongings. I was wondering if you had more imag-
cheologist by rescuing images that had been damaged in the
es like that and what objects people generally take with them?
water. I integrated those images for the meaning they had in
the flooded societies. The continuity between that work and
GIDEON: Generally, I’m not there when people are fleeing
the jungle, I felt like I’m almost working as an archeologist
and taking things away. I’m in the aftermath but it is some-
but removing objects that say a lot about what’s going on in a
thing I think about. What do you save when you need to flee
very charged and political place, prior to thousands of years
your house? There’s your family, there’s your cats…for me
of sediments working on top of them.
I would take my cats. Is it a personal thing, like would you
take your laptop? I would take my cats and my laptop and
ANDREA: You have one portrait of this couple going down
my hard drives. But it’s dependent on the person. People
Gideon Mendel, Hilal Ahmed Shaikh and Shameema Shaikh Jawahar Nagar, Srinagar, Kashmir, India, October 2014.
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