Book Review Ian Berry – Water

Water, the lifeblood of our planet. It covers 71% of its surface, and is fundamental to our existence, a resource essential for drinking, agriculture, and sustaining ecosystems. Beyond its physical necessity, water holds profound cultural and spiritual significance, symbolizing purification, renewal, and the flow of life itself. It is also through water that we can observe some of the most pressing crises of our time—climate change, pollution, exploitation, and inequality.

Despite its seeming abundance water is unevenly distributed. Some regions suffer from relentless drought, while others face catastrophic floods or rising sea levels that threaten entire communities. Many rivers, once thriving arteries of civilization, are now polluted or depleted due to human overuse. Glaciers, crucial reservoirs of freshwater, are retreating at alarming rates, contributing to rising seas and climate instability. In this paradox of scarcity and excess, photojournalist Berry finds his subject—a deep, unflinching look at our relationship with water, in all its beauty and devastation.

Left image: Wanxian, Sichuan, China. In an area about to be flooded in the next phase of the Three Gorges Dam project, a woman sleeps in a chair amid the detritus of her demolished house.

Right image: Edfu, Aswan, Egypt. In the early morning, horses that pull the caleches (horse-drawn carriages specially for tourists) are treated to a wash and a cool down in the Nile.

His journey into this project began while reporting on Greenland’s shrinking glaciers alongside Danish climatologists for The Climate Group—an experience that coincided with rising global awareness of climate change acceleration. Much like the essay Water, Water Everywhere, which examines the uneven distribution and misuse of this essential resource, Berry’s work lays bare the contradictions of abundance and deprivation.

Over the next fifteen years, he traveled the world, documenting wildfires, droughts, floods, pollution, and deforestation, capturing both the landscapes transformed by climate change and the people struggling to adapt.

English photographer Berry, long recognized for his penetrating photojournalism documenting conflict, famine, and apartheid, brings the same raw honesty to this body of work. Through his lens, we see a world shaped by water. His images, stark yet deeply human, illustrate moments of everyday life where water plays a central role—whether as a giver of life, a force of destruction, or a commodity to be exploited. His signature grainy monochrome palette accentuates the complexities of emotion within each frame. The beauty. The suffering. The destruction.

Left image: India. Uttar Pradesh. Varanasi (Benares). A Hindu man prayis at dawn in the holy river Ganges.

Right image: India. Madhya Pradesh. Pathrad. Women show their support for the Rally in the Valley movement begun by famed writer Arundathi Roy to protest the building of the Narmada dam and the subsequent flooding of this and other villages.

The connection between land, people, and water cannot be separated. The rivers that sustain civilizations are the same ones choked by pollution. The glaciers that have held the planet’s history in ice are now vanishing at an unprecedented rate. Coastal communities, once thriving, now battle the encroaching sea. Through Berry’s lens, we see not just the consequences of these changes but the people caught in the balance—the farmers whose lands have turned to dust, the fishermen whose waters have turned toxic, the displaced whose homes have been swallowed by floods.

There is an irony woven through his images, mirroring the contradictions highlighted in the essay. In one, gold miners toil underground, their drills constantly sprayed with water to keep them cool—using the very resource they pollute in search of wealth that will benefit others. Off the coastline of Spain, fishermen are paid to clean up a catastrophic oil spill, their livelihoods dependent on the very waters poisoned by human negligence. These juxtapositions are unsettling, revealing how deeply entwined water is with human greed and survival.

Yet, within these images, there is also resilience. Water, even as it destroys, also sustains. It is the thread that binds generations, rituals, and survival itself. Berry’s work does not offer easy answers, nor does it moralize. Instead, it forces us to look—to truly see—the world as it is and to question the choices that have led us here.

In the book’s introduction, Kathie Webber notes that, for the first time, the Global Risks Report is dominated by environmental threats—human-driven destruction, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss.

Berry’s work reflects this stark reality, yet it is not a eulogy, but a call to action. Water is both destroyer and sustainer, relentless yet enduring. It connects us all, flowing through our histories, our struggles, and our survival. In the face of crisis, his images serve as both a warning and a call to action—a reminder that, like water itself, we must adapt, persist, and find a way forward together.

Water is published by GOST and is available via their website.

All images © Ian Berry/Magnum Photos