The world’s largest enclosed body of water, the Caspian Sea, is surrounded by jeopardies. Declining water levels from global heating have been exacerbated by increasing levels of extraction from the Volga and the Ural, the Russian rivers that flow into it. Satellite photographs show the sea shrinking at a dramatic rate. And each year increasing levels of pollutants from the five coastal states that border the Caspian contaminate it with spills from growing numbers of oil and gas fields, and with industrial and domestic waste from expanding coastal towns and cities, a magnet for internal migration.
The Iranian photographer Khashayar Javanmardi grew up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran and used to count the hours at school before he could return to swim in it. He has spent the past few years, however, documenting the environmental decline along its coastline.
The project has become a book, Caspian: A Southern Reflection, which depicts the scale of the environmental change and the challenges to lives of local inhabitants, fishermen and farmers, whose existence becomes ever more precarious. Javanmardi took this picture in Gilan province in the far north-west of Iran. Morteza, pictured under a new flyover at the water’s edge, is 23 years old and has worked as a shepherd since he left school. He tried to explain his relationship with the Caspian to Javanmardi. “This sea is more than my parents,” he said. “When I’m unhappy or I need to talk to someone I come here and talk to the sea. I miss the sea if I don’t see it for a week. The Caspian was kinder in the past, but now she is angry with us. She is angry because we didn’t appreciate her.”