The Tamesis
Text and photos by Mustafa Abdulaziz
“In 2012, I started”water” — a photographic series about changes in global landscapes under the pressure of water scarcity. By 2030, according to United Nations statistics With half the world’s population likely to face water shortages in 2018, I am interested in those who are grappling with the impacts of their environment, but also in the ways they are shaped by it. The project is divided into chapters, covering the cholera epidemic in Sierra Leone, gender issues and water supply issues in Ethiopia, Pakistan and Nigeria, Amazon deforestation, industrialization in the Yangtze River Basin. The scope of the project documents the impact of hurricanes in the US Gulf of Texas, Louisiana and Florida, as well as the world’s most Dual droughts in California, one of the largest economies, and a historic drought in Cape Town, South Africa, almost led to water shortages in the first 21st century city in Germany, my adopted country. This project is a year-long study of climate change in Arctic countries such as Greenland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and the United States, taking a collective and global look at our choices and how they affect the lives of people living under stress. Water is a mirror that reveals our actions in the landscape.
Baffin Bay, Canada, 2022
“Berlin-based American photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz has turned his lens to this far north. For a decade, he has documented the impact of climate change on humanity. He has conducted extensive research on the subject of water, an increasingly scarce resource in Asia, Africa and the United States. The Arctic represents a new step in its search for a world heading toward self-destruction.” 2022 In 2006, he visited the Norwegian archipelago of Greenland. Svalbard, Alaska, northern Canada and the most important city of Swedish Lapland, Kiruna. The aesthetics of these photos recall fantasy worlds – a mix of black and white and color, as if recalling things from the past and present that no longer exist, except in our imaginations that continue to fantasize far away. Far from all civilized wild spaces, there are no polar bears, aurora borealis or snow-capped mountains in his photos. In Ilulissat, Greenland, Mustafa Abdelaziz photographed the harbor where overfished halibut is packed with fish destined for shipment to the other side of the world in Kiruna, 200 meters north of the Arctic Circle. Kilometer 632 in the center of the mountain excavated by humans, where the ground is eroded by iron ore where the Swedish LKAB Group has just discovered large deposits of rare earth metals. Le Monde M Magazine (Paris)
Summer sea ice hits record lows. Arctic Ocean, 2022In the past, miners would take a canary in a cage with them when they went down into the mine. If the birds stop singing, people know they have to surface as quickly as possible. Toxic gas circulation in mines. Today’s Arctic is the canary, reminding humanity of the state of the planet. Nowhere else are temperatures rising so quickly. Over the past four decades, warming has been four times faster than the rest of the world. This is just the beginning. This phenomenon is expected to accelerate in the coming decades. The reason lies in the Arctic amplification mechanism: under global warming, sea ice and snow continue to decrease, reflecting less sunlight, while the heat is absorbed by the ocean. All scientific research is clear: Arctic summer sea ice may disappear by the 2030s.
