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With climate change putting the future of human civilization at great risk, this photo essay transports us back to one birthplace of human civilization: the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, which includes parts of modern day Iraq. For the past five years photographer Emily Garthwaite has focused her lens here. By living alongside her subjects for long periods of time, she gained rare access to their culture. Garthwaite’s photos show fishermen, families, and children going about their daily lives in a dying landscape, often in the glow of industrial smokestacks across the marsh. With exquisite composition, the photos capture not only landscapes in decay but also the emotions of the Marsh Arab people and their struggles. One grasps the story these photos tell without having to read their captions, a sure sign of superior photography.

Published alongside an in-depth article in Noēma, a California-based magazine that takes a multidisciplinary approach to global issues, these haunting photographs enable readers to see and feel, unforgettably, the humanitarian and environmental impacts of climate change.

The Last Of The Marsh Arabs




About the awards

InstituteTM (collectively Institute Pictures, Institute Studios, & Institute Artist) is redefining how stories are produced and told in the 21st Century. Founded by Producer Frank Evers and Director/Visual Artist Lauren Greenfield, we are a multiplatform production company representing auteur-driven storytellers across commercials, photography, fine art, film, and technology — and producing original work across every screen that those stories live on. Our multiplatform expertise and established global relationships in entertainment, commercial, fine art, and journalism create unmatched reach and cross-pollination of creative work. A film commission informs a photography campaign; a fine art practice shapes a commercial; an editorial relationship opens a documentary. Few companies operate fluently across all of these worlds. Institute was built this way from the ground up.

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