Author(s): Jean Michel Cousteau & Francesca Sorrenti (ed.) & Marisha Shibuya (ed.)

Coffee Table Books

H2O. The Dead Sea. Rain. Acid rain. Heavy water. The Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, the source of the Nile. A tap, and on and on? More than 1 billion people have insufficient water to sustain life. The World Health Organisation has the figures. The River Jordan, the Biblical epitome of water, is dying, like a man with his throat cut, his blood seeping down a drain. In Water Culture, Francesca Sorrenti of ske Group, in collaboration with Ocean Futures Society's Jean-Michel Cousteau, has collected a kaleidoscope of the elemental qualities of water in a series of photographs that are breathtaking to behold in their fantasy and equilibrium. They chose the works of Mario Sorrenti, Nan Goldin, Fabien Baron, Cedric Bouchet, Andrew Bettles, and Steve McCurry, among others, to represent this world. Against these extraordinary images are set the records of the follies of mankind, the greed and despair and ignorance of the source of life that will again leave a bewildered albatross or a seal coated in oil by another Amoco Cadiz that has spilt 250,000 tons of human degradation into the oceans. Water Culture is dedicated to The International Year of Freshwater 2003.