World of Water

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project © Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project © Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project View all images ↓
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World of Water traces water from mist to sea, linking poetic surfaces to the element’s ecosystem services—cooling, storage, flow, habitat—and its vulnerability in a warming climate. Made in dialogue with UFZ scientists in Leipzig.

World of Water

Photography on water as material, system and meaning in a changing climate.

Scope

World of Water follows water through a cyclical arc—from cloud and mist to still lakes, “green water” within plant life, urban water infrastructures, and the surging sea. Across these stations, water appears as one continuous force that connects bodies, landscapes and built environments.

In dialogue with science

The project was developed in dialogue with researchers at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig. This exchange supports a photographic inquiry into the complex ecosystem services water enables: cooling and climate regulation, storage and flood moderation, groundwater recharge, habitat and biodiversity support, provisioning, and cultural meaning. The work also addresses water’s increasing pressure under climate change—drought and altered flows, heat stress, intensified extremes, and rising seas—without reducing these processes to illustration.

Visual approach

The series uses a slowed gaze and a restrained tonal register. By limiting palette and contrast, light and surface—grain, crack, ripple, reflection—carry the narrative. Poetic moments are kept tethered to ecological realities: the beauty of a reflection can sit beside the legible absence of flow; the calm of a reservoir can echo questions of control, scarcity, and responsibility.

Outputs

  • Photobook (2025): 124-page monograph with 66 plates and an introductory essay by Prof. Dr Erik Gawel (UFZ/University of Leipzig).

  • Exhibition (2026): planned solo presentation at Technical University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg.

Intention

Rather than arguing, the work aims to invite attention: to water as a living infrastructure of the planet, and to the fragile conditions that make its cycles—and our futures—possible.

This project is a candidate for PhMuseum 2026 Photography Grant

Learn more Present your project
© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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01 Frozen Shroud (2025)The water’s surface has tightened into ice, folding like cloth into an abstract relief. Fine frost and granular snow settle into the creases, turning flow into a quiet topography. The image opens the series with water in its most restrained state—matter held, paused, and re-shaped by cold. What reads as drapery is simply phase change: a familiar element becoming form.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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02 Nimbostratus 01 (2019)Cloud cover is seen twice: once as weather, once as its reflection held on a still surface. The water becomes a soft mirror, carrying drifting forms while blemishes keep the image anchored in the material world. What looks like a sky-scape is made at ground level. The series shifts from ice-bound matter to water as atmosphere and memory.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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03 Mist Along the Rhine (2021)A veil of mist turns Bonn’s skyline into a muted gradient, with the treeline acting as a dark, porous threshold. Here, water appears as urban atmosphere—a climatic layer that governs visibility, distance and orientation in the city. The image opens the “urban water” chapter by shifting from natural cycles to its urban impact.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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04 Vein Path (2025)Condensation beads across the pane and briefly reveals former snail trails as a dark, branching network. Water acts as developer: what is usually invisible becomes legible only under specific light and humidity. The line reads like a vein-map or river system, where biology and weather co-author the image. Made entirely in-camera, the photograph holds a quiet encounter.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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05 Thirsty city, cruel heat (2025)Water returns here as infrastructure under heat stress: misting jets turn the wall into a temporary climate machine. In the muted, stone-bound scene, a lone figure reaches into the spray as if in prayer—relief measured in droplets. The image condenses urban adaptation to a simple gesture: cooling, constraint, and need.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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06 La tour reflétée [The reflected Tower] (2024)A canal turns the city into a second, wavering architecture: a lamp tower becomes a dark stem in a bright field of water. The hard edge of the quay meets soft ripples and small rings, where life and weather leave their marks. Urban water appears here as quiet public good—biotope, cooling, and a pause in the built grid.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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07 Submergence (2018)A moss-darkened pillar stands in still lake water, half monument, half marker. Reflections of bare trees stitch the surface into a dense, breathing mesh, while small rings hint at life below. The image holds water as habitat—an aquatic system where time accumulates as algae, sediment and growth.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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08 Underpass I (2024)In this underpass, urban water is held in a hard channel of concrete, where containment becomes the dominant geometry. The surface answers with reflection, turning infrastructure into a quiet mirror and registering the slightest vibration. Thin drip-lines from the ceiling mark seepage and leakage—water’s slow, persistent agency within the engineered frame.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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09 Discharge (2020)A round outlet releases a controlled stream into a concrete basin—water reduced to flow-rate and containment. The strict symmetry and hard walls read as management rather than landscape, with algae stains and sediment marking what persists beyond design. The scene feels austere: a vital element routed through an engineered throat.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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10 Tunnel (2018)A concrete conduit lies dry, its mouth filled with leaves and dust where water is expected. The frame turns absence into evidence: an engineered channel that can no longer speak in flow. In the context of climate change, low water and disrupted seasonal rhythms make scarcity newly legible in everyday infrastructure. A faint glint deep inside holds the idea of return.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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11 Carboniferous I (2018)A different face of water: “green water” held in living biomass. The series widens from surface beauty to the functions that keep ecosystems alive. A beauty that evokes the primeval forests of the carboniferous period—linking ecological cycles to geological time and the roots of fossil fuels.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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12 Curtain of Light (2025)The canal surface carries a quiet biotope: lily pads gathered along the edge, floating on dark, slow water. Opposite, a construction tarpaulin is pulled into soft folds, and the water throws its light back as trembling, vertical streaks. Nature and repair coexist in one frame—urban water as habitat, mirror, and moving projector.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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13 Water’s Rush (2018)Water breaks into pure motion here—turbulent, loud in texture, impossible to hold. A diagonal cut splits foam from dark force, turning the frame into a study of pressure and release. The image marks the series’ shift towards water’s power: not mirror or memory, but kinetic weight.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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14 Fall into the Depth II (2024)Release of force: water as movement and weight. After the tunnel’s void, the torrent returns as a Romantic landscape framed by dark trees—spray, gravity, roar—no longer a surface to read but an event to endure, pulling the body back into the story.

© Marcel van Beek - Image from the World of Water photography project
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15 Breakwater (At the Shore)Final widening: the coast as boundary and indicator. Human protection meets the sea—quiet geometry under climate-driven rising dynamics—closing the cycle where stillness and turbulence belong together.