The Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University, UK, Center for Disaster Studies, Institute of Engineering (CDS-IoE), Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mandi, India, are proud to present Picture of Risk 2025!
We asked for submissions of visual depictions showing how communities and individuals adapt, endure, and thrive amid complex global shifts from environmental to societal crises. These could be stories from global scientists, practitioners, and artists’ perspectives about our responses to, for example, floods or climate migration.
The physical exhibition is in the Teaching and Learning Centre (1st floor) and the Department of Engineering Atrium at Durham University.
We are also pleased to bring the exhibition online – please explore the Pictures of Risk and the stories they tell below!
Abdelrahman Alkahlout
What you see is not just a displaced family, but what remains of one.
This image captures a Palestinian family walking from northern to southern Gaza, crossing the military corridor installed by Israeli forces to split the Gaza Strip in half. The road is destroyed. The surroundings are ruins. The air still smells of smoke. And yet, they walk.
They are among thousands forced to flee what was once their home, now nothing but rubble. This corridor, known as the “Netzarim axis” is a militarized checkpoint cutting Gaza into two zones. Surveillance drones, sniper towers, and tanks oversee this path, turning displacement into a calculated ordeal. There is no aid, no safety, no certainty. Only movement.
What drives them is not hope, but necessity. Gaza has no safe place left. Every direction is a risk, and every step is a choice between death and survival.
This image represents the reality of civilians in Gaza during the ongoing Israeli war that began in October 2023. It reflects the devastating effects of forced displacement, systemic destruction, and the psychological scars of war. But within the frame, there is also quiet resilience: a grandmother still holding a child, a mother shielding her baby with a scarf, a man carrying a bag with the last remnants of their life.
Even in this valley of ruins, they choose to walk, because standing still is no longer an option.
Abdelrahman Alkahlout
In a place where destruction has become routine, hundreds of Palestinian men gather for Friday prayer beside the ruins of a flattened mosque in Gaza. There are no walls, no ceiling, only rubble, exposed rebar, and fragments of lives once lived. Yet here, faith endures.
This image was taken during the ongoing war in 2024, where indiscriminate airstrikes reduced entire neighborhoods to dust. Despite the ever-present risk of renewed bombing, the community came together to pray publicly, side by side, on what was once sacred ground. Their act was not only one of worship, but a form of peaceful resistance, a declaration that even amid devastation, identity, dignity, and belief remain unshaken.
Prayer here is no longer just a spiritual act, it is survival, resilience, and defiance. Surrounded by the chaos of war, these worshippers chose to kneel, seeking protection not from fortified shelters, but from their faith. It is a moment suspended between risk and resolve.
This image is part of the broader transition to resilience in Gaza, where people continue to rebuild meaning through ritual and unity, even as the world collapses around them. Their presence amid the ruins is a powerful reminder: resilience is not always loud, it sometimes whispers through prayer.
Abdul Hameed
‘Walking the Line: A Glimpse of Resilience in Transition‘
A young girl balances on a tightrope, mirroring the daily struggles of those below her. In this fleeting moment, tradition, hardship, and quiet strength converge, capturing a community in motion, navigating the delicate path of survival and change.
Ayanava Sil
‘Echoes of Simultala’
This scene captures an abandoned colonial-era mansion in Simultala, India, once a flourishing retreat known for its fresh air and healing climate. During British rule, Simultala was a popular hill station. Wealthy families built grand houses here, inspired by European architecture. The mansion in this image, now empty, once echoed with life, laughter, and leisure. Over time, environmental degradation, lack of infrastructure and migration slowly pushed people away.
But while people left, nature stayed. A large tree has grown rebelliously in front of the house, its strong, sprawling limbs now framing what once was. It is a quiet symbol of resilience, of how nature reclaims, protects and rebuilds even in silence. This photo tells the story of a place impacted by climate change, urban neglect and shifting social patterns, but also of slow recovery.
Simultala’s forgotten homes reflect a larger global shift: rural to urban migration, changing climate patterns and the need to adapt. Yet here, nature has become the guardian of memory and the foundation for future resilience. The tree is a symbol of resilience, how nature adapts and survives. It reminds us that even when things fall apart, something new and strong can grow.
Beihua Guo
The Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959, produced by the United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) in 1956 and published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in 2015, is the most comprehensive record of Cold War nuclear targets ever declassified. Spanning over 800 pages, this document lists the coordinates of more than 4,500 nuclear targets across the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe.
I travel to the nuclear targets in China identified by the SAC in 1956, documenting these sites through photography and creating radioactive uranotypes using the uranium printing process. Many of these sites have undergone dramatic transformation: the once-abandoned Shougang Steel Mill in Beijing became the Big Air venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics; warehouses, airport hangars, and fuel tanks along Shanghai’s Huangpu River now house contemporary art galleries and museums; coal mines in Fushun and Dayu have been repurposed into educational and recreational zones. These seemingly mundane landscapes are, in fact, sites marked by deep historical trauma—legacies of imperialism, Cold War tension, and China’s evolving identity.
Number of nuclear targets photographed: 48 of 368 (as of February 7, 2025).
The submitted image was a uranium print of a photograph taken at Shougang, an abandoned steel mill converted to a park, which served as the Big Air Venue for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
Belen Desmaison (Durham University)
The on-going arts-based research project presents Belén, an amphibian floating neighbourhood in Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon. Amazonian cities are places ‘in-between’ Amazonian worldviews and Anthropocentric, Capitalist understandings of the world. These diverse perspectives blend, merge, evolve and co-exist, often times not peacefully. They do so at multiple scales: from the individual, to the collective and in the functioning of the city as a whole. The drawing (part of a larger collection of drawings to be publicly displayed on the streets of Belén) showcases ways of knowing and inhabiting which are often rendered invisible and not considered in planning. Through storytelling and visual representations the research presents how ‘place’ is experienced, lived, and inhabited by Belenians in diverse forms. Belén –as other peripheral self-built neighbourhoods– is usually depicted in state-led reports and national media as a place of poverty, vulnerability, and violence. These narratives reproduce the marginalisation and stigmatisation of the neighbourhood and depict Belenians as agentless individuals in need of aid. Although there are indeed countless problems in Belén that need to be addressed, I argue that these narratives need to be complemented with the voices and understandings of ‘place’ resulting from the multiple assemblages of the human and more-than-human agents that inhabit Belén. The amphibian neighbourhood is a place where the entanglement between climatic and ecological processes with social and cultural processes is particularly vibrant. The drawings seek to sparkle a conversation around the following questions: How to observe and analyse the complex assemblage of co-existing realities and worldviews in Amazonian cities? How is ‘place’ understood, lived, and experienced in Belén? What do these understandings tell us about the future of Amazonian cities?
The drawings are accompanied with QR codes which direct the observer to GIFs that emulate the dynamism and changing seasonal rhythms of flooding settlements in the lowland Amazon rainforest.
Clarissa Cervantes
“Witness” was taken after a rainy storm day in Los Angeles, California. The Snow Egret, a common migrant of the wetlands, is a witness of change and resilience, while surviving water pollution and habitat changes, after environmental disasters.
Ellen Robson (Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University)
‘The road to failure (2025)‘
This image depicts a large landslide failure scarp close to The Prashar Lake in Mandi District, Himachal Pradesh, northwestern India. This landslide occurred during a period of unprecedented heavy rainfall in the region during the monsoon season in 2023. A significant volume of material failed, causing a huge amount of damage to the infrastructure downslope. The heavy rainfall resulted in 5,480 landslides, 70,000 tourists being stranded, 1,300 roads bbeing locked, more than 500 fatalities, and damages amounting to around 1 billion USD.
Ellery Littlewood (Durham University)
Over the last million years, Britain’s climate has repeatedly yo-yoed between temperate and glacial, as Britain changed from the island as we know it today to a walkable peninsula of mainland Europe. It’s into this picture that hominins (pre-our species humans) came in, during a time known as the Palaeolithic. Much of the cultural record of these people is lost; even the fossil record in Britain only represents a handful of individuals. What we do have, though, are the tools they left behind. Tools that speak of multigenerational migration into new and often hostile environments, and that show the level of adaptation to risk and new challenges that they faced. Not just that: the sheer resilience needed to thrive. After all, without the skills needed to make these tools, the learning and transfer of knowledge between individuals, and sustainable communities, these people would have gone extinct long before they could have made a handful of tools, let alone the hundreds of thousands in collections today.
Holding these tools is like a handshake through time. They fit so well in the hand, to the point that you can tell if the maker was right or left handed, and there’s something so fundamentally human that comes with that. That’s not surprising though, given that their DNA is echoed in our own. This handaxe was made c.300,000 years ago in present-day Stoke Newington, London, on what was then the banks of the Thames. Today it’s kept in British Museum stores, just a 45 minute walk from where it was made, where we can study it and, through study, understand something of the resilience of its makers. As our climate transitions, we must learn from the resilience of those who came before and, perhaps, their persistence can give us hope.
Gennadiy Ivanov
‘The One-Thousand-Year-Old Church Tower’
The One-Thousand-Year-Old Church Tower is one of the three paintings by Gennadiy Ivanov, of the Transitions Art-Science Project, which won First Prize in the Individual Category of the 2025 Coastwise Creative Competition. Coastwise is co-creating coastal transition plans and delivering practical projects to help future preparedness of communities in North Norfolk facing coastal erosion. The programme intends to develop adaptive approaches and learning that is transferable to other communities.
Much of the Norfolk coastline is at risk because the erodible geology is very susceptible to sea-level rise, now primarily caused by melting glaciers and ice sheets, especially when coupled with the increasing frequency of strong storms. The increasing frequency of heavy rainfall saturating the cliff material is also an important causal factor.
Ivanov’s art draws viewers in and encourages engagement, so that they become part of the discussion of what is possible, and what is not possible, in terms of engineering solutions to coastal erosion. It also raises awareness of the longevity, or inevitability, of erosion of such soft coastlines. Norfolk and Suffolk have been losing settlements to the sea for centuries. This painting of a recent cliff collapse neatly encapsulates that with the understated, soon-to-vanish, church tower. Striking the right balance between adaptation and coastal protection will make at-risk communities more resilient.
Gennadiy Ivanov
‘Code Red for Peyto Glacier’
Code Red for Peyto Glacier is the cover picture of a book published by UNESCO and the University of Saskatchewan on 21 March 2025, the first World Glacier Day. The book contains more than 140 original art pieces by Gennadiy Ivanov and is titled The Great Thaw: A Homage in Art to the Vanishing Cryosphere.
Peyto Glacier, a long-studied glacier in Alberta, Canada, is portrayed in the summer of 2021 under an intense heat dome when the glacier retreated 200m, roughly ten times its recent rate up until then. The melting continued at an extraordinary rate in the following three summers. Similar events have occurred to mountain glaciers around the world. Research by Global Water Futures suggests that Peyto Glacier may vanish completely well before 2050.
The Great Thaw was authored by John W. Pomeroy, Trevor D. Davies and Gennadiy Ivanov, members of the Transitions Art-Science Project, whose fusing of art and accessible science was instrumental in the UN declaring 2025 as the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation. The book points out the inevitability that many glaciers will melt, much permafrost will thaw, snow seasons will shorten, and snowpacks will decline in the coming decades. This will mean the termination of many cryospheric components of our earth system and the emergence of new, warmer, more rainfall-dominated river basins, expanded vegetation cover in cold regions, migration of species, and massive adaptation needs for humans. We will have less reliable downstream water supplies.
Paintings such as Code Red for Peyto, and the accompanying science, in the book highlight the need to keep these changes within limits – through reductions in greenhouse gas emissions – which preserve at least some of our cryosphere, in order to maintain some resilience in our climate system, in our water supply, and for many species including our own.
Isabela Zini de Oliveira (Institute of Hydraulic Research, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, UFRGS)
In this photograph, I overlay an image of the great flood of 1941 — then considered the largest in the history of Porto Alegre — onto the 2024 scene, when more than 46 neighborhoods were flooded in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Despite more than 80 years having passed and the construction of a flood protection system, the similarity between the two events reveals how the lack of proper maintenance can compromise infrastructure in the long term.
This visual overlay highlights a fundamental lesson: public measures must be continuously maintained and adapted to remain effective. As climate events become more intense and frequent, resilience requires more than initial investments — it demands ongoing commitment, planning, and accountability. The repetition of history seen here is not only a reflection of failure, but a reminder to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Kritika (Indian Institute of Technology, IIT, Mandi)
These photographs capture fragments of the 2023 monsoon disaster in Himachal Pradesh, revealing that resilience is not just about rebuilding but about staying, adapting and enduring through uncertainty. A section of the National Highway (NH-03) in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh which was swept away by flash flood from cloudburst showing growing exposure of the region to extreme weather events.
(a). Families living in temporary shelters on an adjacent hillside in Nihri, Mandi, after the monsoon disaster damaged their homes. Their safety is still uncertain, but their will to remain rooted reflects quiet strength
(b). A wooden bridge on Thirthan River in Kullu, temporarily constructed to reconnect only school present in the village to the rest of the village after the original was swept away. After remaining closed for 52 days, the school reopened with the bridge highlighting the importance of adaptation amid absence
(c). In these remote areas of Himachal Pradesh where nature tests limits year after year, it is human resilience that keeps life moving forward.
Lianchao Chen (Durham University)
‘Together We Walk’
In this poignant image, a mother rhinoceros and her calf move slowly through a dry African savanna, their heads low to the earth in a quiet search for sustenance. Captured during the parched season, this moment speaks to the quiet resilience of nature amid deepening ecological uncertainty.
As climate change intensifies, species like the rhino face shrinking habitats, diminishing water sources, and increasing threats from poaching. Their survival is not just a matter of adaptation, but of intergenerational endurance and protection. The intimate bond between mother and calf here symbolizes a deeper truth: resilience is not solitary—it is relational, passed on, and walked together.
This photograph offers more than wildlife documentation—it reflects the broader human experience of navigating a world in flux. Just as these animals forge ahead through scarcity and risk, so too do communities across the globe, confronting displacement, climate migration, and systemic change with quiet strength and care.
Madina Baymirzaeva
‘Limits of Decay investigates biological decay as a critical process of ecological resilience‘
The images depict various organic materials undergoing fungal decomposition — a natural cycle often dismissed as purely destructive. However, decay plays a vital role in environmental renewal: by breaking down complex matter, it enables the formation of new ecosystems. In the context of Exploring Risk, this work highlights the dual nature of risk: destruction and creation are intertwined. Risk is not only an event of collapse but also a catalyst for transformation.
Captured through a flatbed scanner, each image reveals intricate microstructures, textures, and rhythms invisible to the naked eye. This method transforms decay into a form of visual art, emphasizing the structural beauty and dynamic energy inherent in decomposition, and challenging viewers to reconsider their perceptions of decay as solely negative.
By confronting discomfort and recognizing resilience within destruction, Limits of Decay suggests that mold does not simply destroy; it transforms — creating new spaces, new meanings, and new possibilities. By crossing the limits of what is considered beautiful or acceptable, the project reflects on change as a fundamental, unavoidable part of existence.
Mike Crang (Durham University)
The picture is of the “Monument to Courage” that celebrates the rebuilding of Tashkent after the earthquake of 1966. In the foreground is a cracked, black labradorite block showing the date and time (6 April 1966, at 5:24 am) when an 8.3 earthquake right beneath its centre devastated the city rendering about half its population homeless. The crack in the stone extends back along the ground as an inlaid lightning bolt depicting the ruptured ground to the rubble around the feet of a family depicted in late Soviet realist style with the woman holding a child and the man stepping forward to protect them. To the rear is a bronze relief depicting rebuilding composed of 15 panels, one for each of the Republics of the USSR who all sent relief workers and construction teams.
Standing now in the heart of post-Soviet Uzbekistan, it raises interesting questions of forms of resilience that no longer exist, solidarities no longer available, and still persisting patriarchal values. A fantasy then of Western figures, as denationalised workers, where gender equality was, and is, constitutional rather than real, a fantasy of remembered communal mutuality that was driven by authoritarian mobilisation, and where a discourse of heroic sacrifice dominated in terms of resilience.
A statue whose passage through time asks unintended questions of what resilience was and is, how it was imagined then and would be now
Miles Astray
Preparing for an increased influx of climate and war refugees, the European Union has invested around 275 million Euros to build five new reception facilities on the Greek islands of Samos, Lesvos, Chios, Leros, and Kos. These islands are popular gateways to mainland Europe and the EU due to their proximity to the Turkish coastline. The majority of refugees arrives from Africa and the Middle East, passing through Turkey on their way to Europe. The first of the five camps was opened in late 2021 on the island of Samos. I was shocked to see the living conditions at the old camp, which had been vacated two days prior to my arrival. With a capacity of 650 people, the facility was not equipped to provide shelter to the 8,000 refugees who lived here at peak times, forcing most of them to set up camp outside, populating the surrounding hills in makeshift shelters throughout hot summers and cold winters, including hundreds of children. The picture shows one of the recently abandoned huts where people endured their ordeal, at times waiting in limbo for up to two years before being processed. With a capacity of 2,040 people (later increased to 3,650), the new camp offers improved living conditions to more people, but at an exorbitant price: human rights organizations point out that the new reception centers are prison-like detention facilities, where the most vulnerable are kept under 24h surveillance like inmates.
Miles Astray
In a desert metropolis of 22 million, many things are scarce, and few are as abundant as trash. For decades, Cairo lacked an organized approach to waste management – an administrational gap filled by the people of Manshiyat Nasser, a neighborhood known as Garbage City. For about 70 years, the mainly Coptic Christian population has put its faith in the garbage the city provides, recollecting and recycling the things nobody wants into a living. Garbage City looks like a landfill fell from the sky and covered an otherwise typical Cairo neighborhood with trash – trash on rooftops, trash in the streets, trash filling houses, mountains of trash on seas of trash. But what looks like a mess, is in fact a highly efficient system that churns out recycling at a staggering rate of 85 %, more than four times the global average.
Nienke van Boom (freelancer)
Forbidden to swim (2024)
In human claimed territory, geese walk around as if they own the place. We cannot put a fence around all nature, water, every road. And they will fly over it. We share so many spaces with animals that we do not think about. Some are in breeding farms and on plates, some are roaming around in the polluted water of our boats and rubbish. They feel they can get something from me, probably food. They don’t know, we get something from their families as well. We think, just because they can’t read, they are stupid and silly. To them, we live in their world, as long as they are free. This image encapsulates the essence of resilience. The geese, unaware of the sign’s directive, continue their natural behaviors. Their presence becomes a silent protest against the constraints humans often place on nature. It prompts reflection on how wildlife navigates and often thrives despite the limitations imposed upon them.
The juxtaposition of the authoritative sign and the indifferent geese serves as a metaphor for the broader relationship between humanity and the natural world. It raises questions about control, freedom, and the unintended consequences of our attempts to regulate nature.This photograph invites viewers to consider the resilience inherent in the natural world and the importance of coexistence. It challenges us to reflect on our role in shaping environments and the need to respect the autonomy of other species.
Pavlos Koutroumpas
This card is used to indicate underage refugees, usually unaccompanied. It was found in Perama/Athens/Greece, where there is a refugee camp. The latter provides a shelter for children that suffered from war. It gives them the chance to safely grow up and develop their capabilites; to start a new promising life.
Prathibha Prakash (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee)
‘Mandala Art Concept – Exploring Urban Floods and Sustainable Practices‘
The ancient art form known as mandala, which comes from the Sanskrit word meaning “circle,” represents the cosmos and interdependence. My mandala artwork at the Exploring Risk Visual Arts Festival 2025 symbolizes the urgent problem of urban flooding and the sustainable methods that can lessen its effects. The Earth encircled by flames, representing consciousness at its core, represents global warming and the pressing need to recognize its effects. A conventional mandala pattern radiates outward before splitting into two contrasting universes. The effects of unplanned urbanization are depicted in the left semicircle. Dry leaves at the beginning signify the loss of vegetation as a result of rapid development. The scene of urban flooding—floating automobiles, flooded streets, and people affected by flash floods—is further exacerbated by impermeable surfaces and inadequate infrastructure. This is followed by heavy and frequent rainfall events. The last section illustrates how industries release harmful gases, underscoring how pollution and climate change increase the likelihood of flooding. The right semicircle, on the other hand, imagines a sustainable future. It starts with urban landscapes braided with protected greenery, signifying balance with the natural world. The preservation of storage structures that sustain biodiversity and act as a buffer during periods of intense precipitation follows from this. It also highlights rainfall collection systems, river meandering, and groundwater recharging, which are frequently lost in metropolitan environments. The combined blue, green, and grey infrastructure in the topmost layer symbolizes sustainable urbanization. A deliberate move toward climate resilience is reflected in the use of electric vehicles, LEED and GRIHA-certified buildings, and carbon credit investments by industries. The mandala concludes with a vision of group action aimed at achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. This artwork employs the mandala’s symbolic shape to depict a conscious journey from vulnerability to sustainability.
Sebastian Sele (www.sele.world)
My work focuses on people living in difficult contexts and their strategies for coping and this image was part of a week-long trip along the U.S.-Mexico border: On August 15, 2022, a man climbed the border wall separating San Diego, USA, from Tijuana, Mexico, and gazed into the infinity of the sky. In a world increasingly defined by borders and their fortifications designed to protect nation-states, what could speak more powerfully to human resilience than one single person climbing – barehanded – a militarized border construction built at a cost of billions? It’s us who cause a large part of our biggest challenges – it’s us who can find the solutions to these problems.
Sebastian Sele (www.sele.world)
My work focuses on people living in difficult contexts and their coping strategies, and this image is part of a photographic project following migrants I met on a rescue ship in the Mediterranean. It shows Gambian asylum seeker Lamin Jammeh during a warm-up in Catania, Sicily, on 6 September 2024. I met Jammeh three years earlier on the Ocean Viking rescue ship in the Mediterranean, where he arrived after 10 hours at sea and almost being shot to death in Libya. While other migrants from the Ocean Viking struggled to really arrive in Europe, Jammeh basically trusted his instincts to integrate into the local community – which still often sees him as an outsider. But thanks to his resilience, he’s now determined to lift his family out of poverty by becoming a professional runner.
Sim Reaney (Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience, Durham University)
‘Rio Teno‘
In 2023, the Rio Teno in Chile experienced a series of high-magnitude flood events. This particular image was captured after a flood event with an estimated probability of less than 1% occurring within any given year. This event significantly altered the river’s course, as evidenced by the clear gravel surfaces indicating the river’s expansion. Additionally, the image depicts the trees that were transported by the floodwaters.
The flood had a profound impact on communities within the catchment area and downstream in the city of Curico. To ascertain the source of the water within the catchment, the impacts of the flood were measured post-event to determine the spatial pattern of rainfall runoff. This information can subsequently be utilised to guide catchment-based mitigation strategies, such as implementing Nature-based Solutions, and to develop flood forecasting systems.