Gothamist: When the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the region, it brought devastating flooding and caused the deaths of at least 13 people in New York City, was a stark reminder about how much our infrastructure—and our elected officials—are unprepared for the climate crisis. But of course this isn’t just a NYC problem, something that became very apparent to Dutch photographer Kadir van Lohuizen when he traveled across the globe over the last decade taking photos to illustrate the dramatic effects of rising sea levels.

Van Lohuizen’s work—collected in the book After Us The Deluge: The Human Consequences of Rising Sea Levels—is the subject of Rising Tide: Visualizing the Human Costs of the Climate Crisis, an exhibit at the Museum of the City Of New York on display through January 2022. Through photographs, video, drone images, and sound, van Lohuizen explores the effects of climate change in places such as Greenland, Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, Fiji, Amsterdam, Panama, Miami, and various New York City neighborhoods. 

Van Lohuizen told Gothamist he started work on this project back in 2012 while in the midst of visually investigating contemporary migration in the Americas, when he encountered people who were already willingly relocating because of rising sea levels.

“That was the first time I encountered that this was already an issue now, not a future generations issue,” he said. “I thought, if it’s happening there, it must be happening elsewhere—not only far away, it’s also happening close to home, whether in the U.S. or Netherlands. Basically, I really wanted to show that this was not a problem we only affiliate with places like Bangladesh and the Pacific, but it’s also happening in Miami and the Meadowlands. The climate crisis doesn’t make a distinction between rich and poor.” Read more>>