Issue No. 28 – Control

What is the nature of control? The desire for it—and to be free of it—are essential parts of both life and art.

Mustafah Abdulaziz: Water

Mustafah Abdulaziz: Water

Sunday service, St. John Apostolic Church of the Whole World. Cape Town, South Africa, 2018 © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Sunday service, St. John Apostolic Church of the Whole World. Cape Town, South Africa, 2018

© Mustafah Abdulaziz

Interviewed by Lara Southern

What sparked the idea to create the project “Water” in 2011? 

The project called Water came from a desire to merge what I previously valued in photojournalism with a more personal voice of humanism that I valued as a person. I’d left my job at The Wall Street Journal to live in Berlin and this felt very much like a departure from the known and an opportunity to redefine what the photographic practice meant to me.

Naturally, this requires some experimentation, time, and risk. The subject matter may seem simple, but the manner [of interpreting] it across so many conceptual levels both intimidates and excites. By making the project on-going I laid the groundwork for my work to adapt and strengthen across time, subject matter, and perspective.

On a deeply personal level, this was an opportunity to make meaningful, intimate photographs that spoke to this current period in our century, where we are in imbalance and conflict with the natural world. This project allows me to comment upon that.

The Yangtze River. Chongqing, China, 2015. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

The Yangtze River. Chongqing, China, 2015. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

In your travels, which communities stood out to you as having the most unique relationship with water? Or rather, which relationships had the most profound effect on you?

The places that have had the most profound effect on me are not the places where the water issues are most dire or extreme. They are places like China and California, Louisiana and India, where large populations are in this constant fluctuation between advancement and suffering, from the effects of that advancement. It is in these environments that I see what deals the “captains of industry” have made to create systems that place the welfare of the lowest tiers of society at great risk in service of economic progress. It is also these places that will require the most adaptation to survive the stresses of a changing climate. And it is these places that will become most prevalent and prominent in the coming decades. I’m most interested in the line where rational and irrational behavior intersect.

Marigold seller. Sangam, Allahabad, India, 2013. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Marigold seller. Sangam, Allahabad, India, 2013. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Over nearly ten years documenting this issue, how has your photographic style and technique evolved?

This year will mark a decade working on this project and, after an unscheduled break in 2020 for obvious reasons, I went back to the drawing board to assess this very question. My technique has always been rather simple; [I use] one or two medium format cameras with the same film stock [and] the same developmental process. My interest has never been in photographic trickery or clever visual techniques. These photographs need to create an overarching humanistic presence and speak across a long period of time. Aesthetic trends do not interest me.

What has evolved most in [my] work has been the thought process--what to say-- and the problem solving to create the opportunities to say it. This has required me to learn many skills that have nothing to do with photography and everything to do with communication, planning, and developing ideas from notebook to field, and then into the next chapters of [my] work.

The Pillars. Mount Martha, Australia, 2017. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

The Pillars. Mount Martha, Australia, 2017. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Over that same time period, have you noticed a shift in the global perspectives on the issue of water?

That is a difficult question to answer concisely. Yes and no. There have been some real leaps and bounds in terms of how the public is being presented this issue across culture, but also some limitations in what outcomes those initiatives generate. Water still is not a human right. Water scarcity still exists on a massive scale. But this work I do is not about just those concepts. Those concepts are one piece of the whole. Adressing the theme of water requires more than documenting water issues; it requires, at the end of the day, documenting the way in which we frame ourselves, what we do, and do not do, in the face of our own survival. Only in this way can a project hope to impact a public that must re-address their fundamental assumptions about the validity of their relationship with the natural world.

Uchiya Nallo, 8 months pregnant, gathering water to make the beer for the village men to celebrate her birth. Konso Region, Ethiopia, 2013. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Uchiya Nallo, 8 months pregnant, gathering water to make the beer for the village men to celebrate her birth. Konso Region, Ethiopia, 2013. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Does viewing an issue through the camera lens, either in the moment or in the developing process, shape how you see an issue?

Hm. I’d like to shift this question away from the photographic practice and redirect it towards the idea of subjective individualistic intent. A camera lens or framework of using one to interpret something will always affect the way in which one person rationalizes and measures the world around them. It does not need to be the only way, nor must it be the most prominent way. There must be a person behind that process who strives to understand, challenge, and grasp the ideas that are critical to their own existence, and ask how this aligns with what they create.

My concern has been to take what is important to me, in my personal life, and make that the first basis for my motives in photographing. Before I ever reach the stage of interpreting an aspect of water or topic related to it, my time is spent working through the thought process of what conceptual ideas need to come from my end. These ideas change as a person does, and it is this constant balance between where I am in life and where I wish to go that determines how and what I photograph.

Construction of bridge over Ganges tributary. Bihar Province, India, 2013. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Construction of bridge over Ganges tributary. Bihar Province, India, 2013. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Are there areas you’d like to shoot that you haven’t had the chance to yet?

The project is not nearly done. I would say it is perhaps 20% done. An argument could be made for 25%. I have just laid the groundwork for what it will need to become in order to transform from a series of photographs into a conceptual visual experience worthy of the title Water.

Snæfellsnes, Iceland, 2016. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Snæfellsnes, Iceland, 2016. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

What do you hope the impact of your images will be?

The emotional shift within a human being that allows them to see themselves and others as one and the beauty that comes with the possibility of committing themselves to improving anything for more than themselves.

Hurricane Michael aftermath. Mexico Beach, Florida, USA, 2018. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

Hurricane Michael aftermath. Mexico Beach, Florida, USA, 2018. © Mustafah Abdulaziz

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