Chloe Dewe Mathews: Caspian: The Elements

Chloe Dewe Mathews (born in London, 1982) is an artist, photographer, and filmmaker based in St. Leonards-on-Sea, England. She is the recipient of the Robert Gardner Fellowship in Photography from Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology. Her work has been published in the Guardian and Financial Times and has been exhibited at the Tate Modern and British Library, London; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; and Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. Morad Montazami is Adjunct Research Curator for the Middle East and North Africa at Tate Modern, London, and director of Zamân Books, Paris. Morad Montazami is Adjunct Research Curator for the Middle East and North Africa at Tate Modern, London, and director of Zamân Books, Paris. Sean O’Hagan writes about photography for the Guardian and the Observer. Arnold van Bruggen, a writer and filmmaker based in Amsterdam, is cofounder of Prospektor, a documentary production company. He is the coauthor with Rob Hornstra of The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus (Aperture, 2013).

“In Caspian British documentary photographer Chloe Dewe Matthews delves deep into the landscapes and people of the Caspian Sea. Using the region’s rich natural resources – oil, rock, uranium – she explores the religious traditions and communal practices, including bathing in crude oil, that endure in an area more often defined by its contested geopolitics.”—Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian, Best Books of 2018, Photography category