Just before Christmas, Hashem Shakeri won Honorable Mention at UNICEF Photo of the year 2018 for his story “An Elegy for the Death of Hamun”.
When the water will be all gone
Iran: It’s not only due to the lack of rain as a result of climate change; dam projects in Iran and neighboring countries like Afghanistan turn rivers into trickles while obsolete irrigation systems speed up the process in which large parts of the country are slowly turned into deserts. Fishing boats on Lake Hamun: They will soon be grounded on dry land.
The result will be hunger, shortage of drinking water and a rural exodus. According to experts, around 50 million people will have to leave their villages and, sooner or later, there will also be a new flow of refugees heading towards Europe. Iranian photographer Hashem Shakeri captured the pending apocalypse in elegiac images: Children on their way through an almost surreal landscape, once full of trees, where more and more villages are disappearing. There is no future here for the children. They will become part of a new wave of migration.
Hashem made the story as his final Photo Story Project during Photo I in the spring 2018.
Each year, UNICEF Germany grants the “UNICEF Photo of the Year Award” to photos and photo series that best depict the personality and living conditions of children worldwide in an outstanding manner.