Photostories

World Water Day through the lens of Mustafah Abdulaziz

The photographer documents water and the socio-economic dynamics related to this element across different cultures and countries, shedding light on our responsibility as humans to reshape our relationship with it and the environment.
By PhotoVogue
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Sunday service, St. John Apostolic Church of the Whole World. Cape Town, South Africa, 2018It was 2018 and Cape Town was beset by water crisis and in the midst of a historic drought. Lines formed in townships and suburbs at pump stations where water was rationed out. The countdown to Day 0 was 95, when the city would run out and become the first 21st Century city to be unable to supply drinking water to its 4.4 million residents.On the outskirts of the Western Cape, towards the reservoirs hollow and harsh from desertification, I’d seen a group swaying in the distance, in a field of dust, out beyond the hood of my truck. I’d come down to this country to document a crisis.I turned off the road and approached on foot towards singing women dressed in teal and white. Beyond the edge of the crowd, I could see teenagers in pure white delicately prepare bowls of water. Further beyond them still a man approached from the field of scrub and sand, and he too was soon encircled by the group.He said he’d struggled with alcoholism and addiction his whole life. He didn’t give his name. In the blinding sun we knelt in the dirt. Somewhere behind us a suffocating drought stretched across millions. A hot wind snapped the white cloth from his shoulders and a priest slashed water from a shallow bowl across his face.

Words and photographs by Mustafah Abdulaziz

“In 2012, I began “Water” — a photographic series on the transformation of global landscapes under the strain of water scarcity. Prompted by a UN statistic that half the world’s population may face scarcity by 2030, I am interested in people who struggle to act upon their environment as much as they are shaped by it. Structured into chapters, the project has covered cholera outbreaks in Sierra Leone, gender issues and water access across Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Nigeria, the deforestation of the Amazon, industrialization on the Yangtze River in China, spirituality and pollution on the Ganges River of India, and the scale of storms along the coasts of Iceland and Cornwall. The scope of the project has documented the legacy of hurricanes in the American Gulf in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, as well as the dual droughts in California, one of the largest economies of the world, and the historic drought of Cape Town, South Africa, that nearly resulted in the first 21st Century City to run out of water. In my adopted country of Germany I documented the floods of 2021 in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia before embarking on a year-long examination of climate change in the Arctic nations of Greenland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. The project examines our choices, collectsively and globally, and how they impact the lives of people who inhabit systems under stress. Water is the mirror and in the landscape our behavior is revealed.”

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Baffin Bay, Canada, 2022
“It is towards this Far North that the American photographer Mustafah Abdulaziz, based in Berlin, turned his lens. For ten years, he has documented the impact of climate change on human beings. He has worked extensively on the theme of water, an increasingly rare resource in Asia, Africa, and the United States. e Arctic represents a new step in its hunt for a world on the path to self-destruction.""In 2022, he visited Greenland, the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Alaska, northern Canada, and Kiruna, the most important city in Swedish Lapland. He came back with photos whose aesthetic recalls the world of fantasy—that of the tales – a mixture of black and white and colors. As if to recall what was and is no longer or perhaps never was, except in our imagination which continues to fantasize about wild spaces far from all civilization. In his photos, there are no polar bears, northern lights, or snow-capped mountains. But the ice floe, red with the blood of a seal killed by a Greenlandic hunter. In Ilulissat, Greenland, Mustafah Abdulaziz photographs the port, cluttered with trawlers, the docks, covered with boxes of fish – overfished halibut – which will be transported to the other side of the world. In Alaska, he flies over the Red Dog open pit mine, which exploits the largest zinc reserves in the world. It also pollutes more than any other industrial facility in North America. It shows the greenish water of the lake in the heart of the mountain dug by man. In Kiruna, 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, where the ground threatens to collapse, eaten away by the iron mine in which the Swedish group LKAB has just discovered an immense deposit of rare earth metals, he goes to meet the residents moving the entire city.”— “Horreur Boréale” by Anne-Françoise Hivert. Numéro 632, Le Monde M Magazine (Paris)
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Record-low summer sea ice. Arctic Ocean, 2022In previous times, miners took a caged canary when they went underground. If the bird stopped singing, the men knew they had to get to the surface as quickly as possible. Toxic gas was circulating in the mine. e Arctic is today this canary, which alerts humanity to the state of the planet. Nowhere else do temperatures rise so quickly. Over the past forty years, warming has been four times faster than in the rest of the world. It's only the beginning. In the coming decades, the phenomenon is expected to accelerate. e reason for this is the mechanism of Arctic amplification: in a warming global climate, the sea ice and snow are losing ground and thus reflect less of the sun's rays, the heat of which is then absorbed by the sea. All scientific studies are clear: by the 2030s, the Arctic could be deprived of sea ice in summer.
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No. 2. Arctic Ocean, 2022The largest natural stabilizer of our climate system. The white color of Arctic sea ice is a mirror that reflects solar radiation. Every year Arctic sea ice disappears a little more. Behind the loss of Arctic sea ice are fires. Droughts. Polar vortexes. Intense rains. Heatwaves. We cannot afford to lose Arctic sea ice.
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Gateway to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Alaska, USA, 2022This Arctic is a dream based on prejudices and full of blind spots. It will turn into a nightmare if we do not take seriously what is happening and if we continue to consider nature as a limitless fiction. It is time to react.
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Inuit hunting. Greenland, 2022
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Lake Mead, Hoover Dam. Nevada, USA, 2015Lake Mead, on the Colorado River, is the largest reservoir in the United States (by capacity). The reservoir was created by, and is the source of energy for, the largest hydroelectric power source in the Southwest, the Hoover Dam. The reservoir provides water to three states; California, Nevada and Arizona, and the Hoover Dam supplies energy to 29 million people. Increased demand and drought have put a strain on the reservoir's water levels. Since 1999, the lake has dropped 130 feet, and is now at just 37% of its capacity. Lake Mead has become the gage through which to measure the wider water scarcity crisis in California. A consortium of journalists and scientists with expertise on environmental resources (Circle of Blue) claim that for every foot that Mead drops, generating capacity decreases by five to six megawatts. If the lake remains at current water levels, the government will implement emergency measures to prevent levels falling further. The dam can continue to operate at present but at a reduced capacity. The operation of the dam comes under threat from reduced water levels, causing a strain on machinery. If levels continue to fall, this would result in the closure of units, and thus, the dam.
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Wattamolla, Australia, 2017
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Summer rain on permafrost. Alaska, USA, 2022
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Construction of bridge over Ganges tributary. Bihar Province, India, 2013Men bathe underneath the construction of a new bridge linking Haijipur and Sonepur over the Gandak River, a tributary that feeds into the Ganges River in the same area. The construction of new bridges is a common sight on the Ganges River as India expands and links cities that were once separated by the river. This bridge, located in the Bihar Province of eastern India, serves multiple roles for the needs of people who live along it: bathing, a source of water for cooking and transportation. As the Ganges progresses through highly populated cities, the role it plays transforms from spiritual to necessity.
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Yangtze River. Chongqing, China, 2015“Today the Yangtze River is two inches higher than it was in midwinter 1,234 years ago. The intervening years have witnessed other changes — the passing of five imperial dynasties; there arrival and departure of the Mongols, the Manchus, the British, the Japanese; the construction of the Great Wall and the destruction of the Cultural Revolution; the Great Leap Forward and the Reform and Opening; the development of the three Gorges Dam from a half-formed dream to the biggest building project in China — but despite all of these changes the level of today’s Yangtze is exactly two inches higher than it was in 763. Two inches in 1,234 years.”— Peter Hessler, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (2001)
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Glacier’s end, Brooks Range. Alaska, USA, 2022
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Brooks Range. Alaska, USA, 2022Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.— Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay (1923)
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Classic Club Golf Course. California, USA, 2015Palm Springs and other cities in Coachella Valley were designed as green oases in the desert. e emerald green grasses of the desert resorts that draw in tourists and wealthy residents rely on a water supply that is cheap and plentiful. In 2015, numbers released by the Desert Water Agency, which provides water to Palm Springs and nearby areas, reported consumption of 221 gallons per person per day, above the state average of 77 gallons.“Why don't you go on west to California? ere's work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there?” — John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath (1939)
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Uchiya Nallo, 8 months pregnant, gathering water to make the beer for the village men to celebrate her birth. Konso Region, Ethiopia, 2013Although Uchiya, 29, is eight months pregnant and spends half of her day climbings up a mountain side carrying 20 litres of water (approximately 20 kg, the average weight allowance for a suitcase when flying), she is still worrying about preparing beer for visiting guests after she’s given birth. Sub-Saharan African studies estimate that an average of 10% of the carrier’s daily calorie intake is spent carrying water.“e road is very dangerous and I feel tired all the time. When I am going to the river I slowly walk there and when I come back I slowly walk up. I am worried because sometimes I fall down and hurt myself. I worry because I feel tired. Now I am almost ready to give birth and I am walking slowly but maybe I will have some problems, I’m not sure.”
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Woman gathering water. Benue, Nigeria, 2015Mariam Bakaule lives on a hill in the valley Jarso, southwest Ethiopia. Like other villagers, she gets up at dawn and walk for more than two hours on steep and stony paths to reach the nearest source - a dry river bed. There, she must dig the sand with bare hands to reach the water and fill the container. The chore falls on women and girls."Bringing the water is not a simple task. This is the essence of women. Water and woman are synonymous here.”The villagers can not live near the source because it is infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
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Hurricane Michael aftermath, Christmas Day. Panama City, Florida, USA, 2018“Parables are a teaching tool and work like glass dioramas in natural history museums: you pass by, you look, you believe that what is contained in the taxidermy scene has something to teach you — but only by the logic of metaphor, because you are not a stuffed animal and do not live in the scene but beyond it, outside it, observing rather than participating. The logic is twisted by global warming, because it collapses the perceived distance between humans and nature — between you and the diorama. One message of climate change is: you do not live outside the scene but within it, subject to all the same horrors you can see afflicting the lives of animals. In fact, warming is already hitting humans so hard that we shouldn’t need to look elsewhere, to endangered species and imperiled ecosystems, in order to trace the progress of climate’s horrible offensive. But we do, saddened by stranded polar bears and stories of struggling coral reefs. Even as we face crippling impacts from climate on human life, we still look to those animals, in part because what John Ruskin memorably called the “pathetic fallacy” still holds: because we would rather not reckon with our own responsibility, but instead simply feel their pain, at least briefly. In the face of a storm kicked up by humans, and which we continue to kick up each day, we seem most comfortable adopting a learned posture of powerlessness.”— David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019)
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Seaweed and shrimp trawlers. Honghu, China, 2015
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Nile River. Egypt, 2018MUSTAFAH ABDULAZIZ
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Women pull water from 130-foot well in the desert. Tharpakar, Pakistan, 2013
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Sunday service, St. John Apostolic Church of the Whole World. Cape Town, South Africa, 2018It was 2018 and Cape Town was beset by water crisis and in the midst of a historic drought. Lines formed in townships and suburbs at pump stations where water was rationed out. The countdown to Day 0 was 95, when the city would run out and become the first 21st Century city to be unable to supply drinking water to its 4.4 million residents.On the outskirts of the Western Cape, towards the reservoirs hollow and harsh from desertification, I’d seen a group swaying in the distance, in a field of dust, out beyond the hood of my truck. I’d come down to this country to document a crisis.I turned off the road and approached on foot towards singing women dressed in teal and white. Beyond the edge of the crowd, I could see teenagers in pure white delicately prepare bowls of water. Further beyond them still a man approached from the field of scrub and sand, and he too was soon encircled by the group.He said he’d struggled with alcoholism and addiction his whole life. He didn’t give his name. In the blinding sun we knelt in the dirt. Somewhere behind us a suffocating drought stretched across millions. A hot wind snapped the white cloth from his shoulders and a priest slashed water from a shallow bowl across his face.
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Coastal erosion due to climate change. Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, USA, 2018
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Gurnard's Head. Cornwall, United Kingdom“Who has known the ocean? Neither you nor I, with our earth-bound senses, know the foam and surge of the tide that beats over the crab hiding under the seaweed of his tide-pool home; or the lilt of the long, slow swells of mid-ocean, where shoals of wandering fish prey and are preyed upon, and the dolphin breaks the waves to breathe the upper atmosphere. Nor can we know the vicissitudes of life on the ocean floor, where sunlight, filtering through a hundred feet of water, makes but a fleeting, bluish twilight, in which dwell sponge and mollusk and starfish and coral, where swarms of diminutive fish twinkle through the dusk like a silver rain of meteors, and eels lie in wait among the rocks. Even less is it given to man to descend those six incomprehensible miles into the recesses of the abyss, where reign utter silence and unvarying cold and eternal night.To sense this world of waters known to the creatures of the sea we must shed our human perceptions of length and breadth and time and place, and enter vicariously into a universe of all-pervading water.”— Rachel Carson, “Undersea” The Atlantic Monthly (September, 1937)
About the artist

Mustafah Abdulaziz (b. 1986, New York City) is a photographer & director based between Berlin and London. For over thirteen years his work has focused on the human impact of climate change by bringing vital stories to the public through large-scale installations around the world. He is the winner of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, a grantee of National Geographic, and a former fellow of the Alicia Patterson and Bertha Foundations. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times, TIME, and Der Spiegel. His work has been acquired by the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection in Stuttgart, the permanent collectsion of Apple, and the National Portrait Gallery in London. His first short film, Women Are Beautiful, debuted in Berlin in 2025.