Ressac – Grégoire Eloy

Once one of the four largest internal seas in the world, the Aral Sea has been shrinking since the 1960s after the Amou-Daria river was diverted by Russia to water cotton fields. By 2007, it had declined down to 10% of its original size, destroying the fishing industry, employment, and modifying the local climate dramatically.

These images were made on both sides of the Aral Sea, in Ouzbekistan and Kazakhstan, between 2008 and 2012; they document the lives of the communities making a living along its shores, whose existence is now seriously threatened by human greed.