NEW YORK, NY.- The Royal National Lifeboat Institution presents Just One Inch of Water, a new exhibition of the work of internationally acclaimed documentary photographers Zackary Canepari, Poulomi Basu and GMB Akash. The exhibition will open on Thursday, June 28th and remain on view through Sunday, July 29th. Exhibitions organized for the general public at UN Headquarters in New York are displayed in the Visitors’ Lobby, which is part of the General Assembly building. The exhibit is organized by RNLI International with the support of the UN Group of Friends on Drowning Prevention.
In Asia and the Pacific, water, at once, shapes the land and its people. Every day, the rivers and oceans play a central and critical role in the support of all life. No living being can survive without it. However, a child can drown in just one inch of water. Drowning, an all-too-silent epidemic, claims the lives of 360,000 people a year worldwide, with those under 25 representing half of the lives lost. For school-age children, drowning is the largest cause of death in the Western Pacific. Regrettably, these tragic facts have been largely ignored, as drowning prevention receives scant acknowledgement and even fewer resources.
The exhibition will feature powerful photographs from Bangladesh, Thailand and Fiji, three countries which have some of the highest drowning rates in the world. The photos express the inherent dangers to the lives and livelihoods fundamentally connected to water, and the intrinsic challenges regarding sustainable development.
The exhibition is organized into four sections. 'Water and Transport' will focus upon travel via water, including passenger ferries, commercial freighters and smaller recreational boats, all of which pose the risk of drowning. These deaths are not recorded as drownings deaths, causing the true death toll to be under represented. 'Water and Livelihoods' will highlight the importance of water as the natural resource underpinning all social and economic activity around the world. While 'Water and WASH' will emphasize water security and sanitation as a prerequisite to health and wellbeing. Finally, 'Water and Leisure' will spotlight the vulnerability of unsupervised children while playing in and around water.
Zackary is an American visual storyteller working in a variety of different mediums. He began his career as a photojournalist in India/Pakistan, before teaming with filmmaker Drea Cooper in 2010 and launching 'California is a Place', a documentary film series which screened at Sundance. The California series created new opportunities both commercially and editorially for Canepari’s work, and led to the project that initially sent him to Flint, Michigan. The documentary feature film 'T-Rex', co-directed by Drea Cooper, told the story of teenage Olympic boxer and Flint native Claressa “T-Rex” Shields. 'T-Rex' premiered at SXSW in March 2015 and was featured on PBS in August 2016.
Canepari then released his first monograph about Flint, entitled 'REX', which was published by Contrasto and won Photobook of the Year at the POYi Awards. In 2016, he launched 'Flint is a Place', consisting of reportage, short films, found photos, virtual reality, interactive maps and archival material. The work was awarded a World Press Photo Award, and Canepari was named Multimedia Photographer of the Year at the POYi Awards in 2016. 'Flint is a Place' received a Guggenheim Fellowship and will be completed at the end of 2018. Canepari is a member of the VII Photo Agency. He directed a documentary series for Netflix about the Flint Police Department, which aired in March 2018.
Poulomi is a storyteller, artist and activist. Raised in Calcutta, India, she is based between New Delhi, India and London, UK. Her work is known for documenting the role of women in isolated communities and conflict zones, and more generally for advocating for the rights of women. Poulomi was featured alongside Hillary Clinton as one of the ‘Amazing women from around the world giving their best advice’ by Refinery29. She is co-founder and director of Just Another Photo Festival, a festival democratizing photography by taking it to the people and forging new audiences.
Exhibited internationally, Poulomi’s personal works have won multiple awards, including the Magnum Emergency Fund. She was also selected for a Magnum Human Rights and Photography Fellowship as well as a Sundance New Frontier Lab Fellowship.
Akash is a Bangladeshi photographer based in Dhaka. He has exhibited all over the world and received more than 100 international awards, with work featured in National Geographic, Vogue, Time, The Sunday Times, Newsweek, Marie Claire and many others. In August 2013, Akash founded the First Light Institute of Photography in Bangladesh, which now welcomes hundreds of students from all over the world. Income from the Institute goes to support more than 500 under-privileged children in Bangladesh, which funds their education.
Akash is also on the jury for several national and international photo contests including Friends of the Earth International Photo Competition, Worldwide Photography Gala Award, Garuda Indonesia World Photo Contest 2014, Fine Art Photography Awards 2014, Sienna International Photography Awards 2015, VIPA 2016, URBAN 2017 and Fine Art Photography Awards 2017.
