Fire / Flood by Gideon Mendel opens this autumn at Soho Photography Quarter. Works from his Drowning World and Burning World series of photographs, alongside a newly commissioned moving image work, will be on show in this free outdoor exhibition.

On show in the recently launched Soho Photography Quarter (SPQ), an exciting new cultural space presenting free open-air exhibitions and projections, the exhibition showcases Mendel’s personal response to our climate crisis.

Since 2007, Mendel has made twenty trips to document floods in thirteen countries, witnessing a shared human experience of climate catastrophe that transcends geographical, cultural and economic divides.

Shown for the first time in the UK, Mendel’s most recent portraits were shot in Bayelsa State, Nigeria and in Sindh Province, Pakistan. Since August 2022, both regions experienced unprecedented rain and were devastated by the worst floods in living memory. Countless structures and buildings were destroyed and millions left homeless. Visiting these communities months after the initial flooding Mendel found that the water levels remained high, still filling people’s homes. Even as the waters recede, the damage to people's lives is immense. Mendel's images record this in a deeply intimate and graphically precise way.

The Burning World series is Mendel’s response to the unprecedented increase in the extremity of wildfires around the world, as global temperatures rise. Since the start of 2020 he has documented the aftermath of fires that have destroyed homes, killed numerous people and burnt millions of acres of land.