The United Nations cited the 2010 monsoon floods in Pakistan as the largest
humanitarian crisis in living memory. The environmental catastrophe effected
twenty million people and highlighted the complicated relationship between nature
and society. The lives of extremely vulnerable groups such as subsistence farmers
and unskilled labourers were severely disrupted by this catastrophe, forcing national
and international observers to confront the uneven distribution of harm based on
social factors in the wake of environmental disaster. In this visual essay, I explore the
slow raging violence of floodwaters, which I witnessed as a humanitarian worker, and
narrate a point of departure from social interventions after environmental collapse.
The accompanying counter narratives draw the viewer’s attention to the politics of
representation. They reveal the dominant discourses of domination of the Third
World subaltern as enacted by humanitarian agencies. By juxtaposing photos and text,
I invite the viewer to engage in a generative encounter that takes note of the tensions
between disrupted communities and systems of international assistance.