Javanmardi’s activist approach to photography blends the melancholy of climate anxiety with classical documentary, along the shores of the world’s largest enclosed body of water.

The Caspian Sea is bounded by Iran on the South, Russia on the North, Azerbaijan on the West, and Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan on the East. Growing up on the shores of the Caspian Sea, Iranian photographer Khashayar Javanmardi witnessed the once-abundant lake fall victim to unregulated exploitation, pollution, overfishing, and climate change, creating a toxic cocktail that impoverishes those who depend on its diminishing returns. Every year, approximately 122,000 tons of pollutants from the Caspian coastal states, including oil pollution, domestic and industrial sewage, pollute the marine environment, endangering other species.

The first part of an ongoing project mapping the region, Javanmardi’s images of the Iranian shores of the Caspian visualise the environmental crisis, portraying the lives of local inhabitants whose existence becomes smaller and poorer as the sea deteriorates. Industrial waste, sewage, and pollutants from commercial fleets have severely impacted aquatic life, threatening food security and causing significant economic losses. The fishing rate has plummeted by 70% in recent years, profoundly affecting local fishermen’s livelihoods.

As he travels along the Caspian Sea, Javanmardi documents the human connection with this environment, as well as the efforts of nature to survive under immense pressure. Javanmardi’s documentary approach is both lyrical and urgent, boldly and confidently harmonising between atmospheric, sublime visual poetry of life along the shore and stark, documentary witnessing of a dire environmental present. In this respect, Caspian appeals to the urgent need for reconciling these two narratives in order to effectively tackle climate change: the incorporation of the political, systemic, and structural into the experience, agency, and activism of everyday lived experience.