Photos and text by Wilma Manders
by Astrid Bouwman
This summer a special book was published, a photo book. Special because of the content, but also because of the way in which it came about.
The (translated) book title is ‘Living Along the Yangtze. Before and After the Three Gorges Dam’ with photos and text (in Dutch) by Wilma Manders.
About the author
Wilma Manders, just eighty, has been attracted to the water all her life. As a child she could always be found in or near water, holidays took her along and on rivers, lakes and seas. First close to home, the ditch next to the school, later further and further away. In her work as a teacher at a primary school in Nijmegen, she was also able to share her fascination with water with the children in her class. She explains: “With the class, we participated in a water project of the water management course at Radboud University, and we learned that we had to be economical with water. The influence of the changing climate was already clear at the time. We also learned that we have to listen to the river and that we cannot tame it with impunity. We wrote poems about water, sang songs and turned them into a performance. We went to the Millingerwaard, which is an example of how we should deal with the river.” After her career in education, Manders threw herself into her other passion, photography. She has photographed for a number of travel magazines. Mander’s photos have been exhibited in several places in the Netherlands and also in the Museum of Science and Technology in Shanghai.
A newspaper report
So it is not surprising that in 1997 she was touched by a newspaper article about the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China, the largest dam in the world. More than a million people had to move, entire villages and towns would disappear under water. What would change? She immediately knew that she had to go to China to see it and to capture it with the camera: “In my own way, I wanted to show what this dam would mean for the people, the landscape, life there.”
Travelling to follow the river
During the construction period from 1997 to 2006 and finally in 2018, when the entire plan was already completed, Manders went to China five times to take photos and – in her own way – to make contact with the people and inform herself, without speaking Chinese herself. Among other things, she photographed that people continued to live in their houses, while there was a sign on their house that the house could be demolished at any time, but also daily life and the consequences of the dam construction for people and nature. More than a million people had to move for this project and the water Behind the dam, 113 meters has been raised over a length of more than 600 kilometers. An area of just over 1000 square kilometers is under water. Where people used to live in simple old houses or gray flats, they now live in new construction, consisting of towering flats.
The photos express the photographer’s love for water, for people and for China. They are telling photos that tell the story of the enormous changes in the life of the Chinese along the Yangtze, over a period of 21 years. In particular, the drastic changes to the landscape due to the extreme rise – sometimes also fall – of the water level and the consequences for nature are strikingly portrayed. This makes the book an important picture of the times.
Personal story
In addition to the images, Manders also describes her personal experiences. She pays attention to environmental issues such as water pollution and climate change. A lot of cultural heritage has been lost and great damage has been caused to ecosystems. Manders saw the cooperation with NGOs and hopes that China will continue to work with them. China is now trying to repair the damage to the environment, for example by banning fishing for ten years. In a collaborative project between the Chinese Academy of Science and the universities of Leiden and Wageningen, the improvement of wastewater management is being studied.
At the presentation of the book, Manders says: “The book is, in a way, my life’s work, because a lot of what I am comes together in it: my love for water, my curiosity about people, my view through the lens, my questions about progress and loss. Everything flows together in this. It was not a clear plan, but a flow. And sometimes you just have to follow them.”
The hardcover book has 268 pages with 280 photos and is self-published. It is for sale for € 60 at bookstore Ieder Z’n Vak in the Lange Hezelstraat 72-76 in Nijmegen. More information is available via
info@wilmamanders.nl
.
ISBN 978-90-904-0108-9
