Big picture: Floods, by Gideon Mendel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2013/jan/04/photography-nigeria-floods-gideon-mendel

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The worst flooding in Nigeria for 50 years reached its height in September; five weeks later, when photographer Gideon Mendel arrived, the water was waist-high.

Residents of Igbogeni, a small town in Bayelsa province, in the south, were by this time used to the water, a semi-permanent fixture that filled their living rooms, submerged their toilets and swamped their streets. They lost clothes, furniture, livelihoods and family. Even in a country used to rainy seasons, the floods caused immense damage to people and property.

The devastation, which affected around 7m people, displaced 2.1m and killed 363, according to offical figures, received little attention compared with hurricane Sandy in the US. A combination of a lack of statistics, corruption claims and international indifference meant they were barely reported on.

Mendel's photographs have gone some way towards addressing that. Swapping his vintage Rolleiflex film camera for his iPhone, he fired off shots quickly and posted them to Instagram, where they were reposted and tweeted. "I hadn't intended to take such good pictures with my phone," he says. "I tend to do my 'serious work' with my film and digital cameras." This teenage boy was larking about with friends in the water – yet his expression as he hits the water is almost sombre.

Mendel's Nigeria work is part of an ongoing project about flooding. Since 2007, he has photographed flood victims around the world within the context of their homes, to depict them as individuals rather than statistics. But, he says, Nigeria was the hardest country to work in: expensive, bureaucratic and cumbersome.