Edfu, Aswan, Egypt

Over the course of 15 years, Magnum photojournalist Ian Berry travelled the globe to document the links between landscape, life and water. A new book brings together a selection of the images which tell the story of man’s complex relationship with water – at a time when the climate crisis demonstrates just how precariously water and life are intertwined. Here, we see horses that pull the caleches (horse-drawn tourist carriages) being treated to an early morning wash and cooldown in the Nile. Ian Berry: Water is available from GOST Books. All photographs: Ian Berry/Magnum

Rajasthan, Udaipur, India

A young woman pumps water for her pot from a well in the town centre in the midst of heavy scooter traffic. Ian Berry says: ‘I have gradually become aware through the years of my gathering images that something extraordinary is happening to our world – this year has shown above all others that the planet is struggling. There is too much water in some places, too little in others’

Ilulissat, Avannaata, Greenland

For the first time, Inuit fishermen are able to access this part of the ocean early in the season but they must weave between the huge chunks of newly melting ice on their way to the fishing grounds. ‘Ice is melting at an unprecedented pace and it’s so very easy to dismiss what is happening when we see it briefly on TV and then it’s gone. I am concerned that our ecosystem is less than robust and if just a few people think of ways in which we can support it, I feel I can rest and let my work tell its tale’

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

When the first monsoon rains sweep on to the subcontinent, causing the tides to surge across the embankments, locals rush to enjoy the cooling spray from the sea after the blistering heat

Galicia, Spain

A net of herring being landed on a local trawler named the Nuevo Diego-David

Fox Glacier, South Island, New Zealand

Walkers explore the glacier, having been flown to the top by helicopter

Daecheon Beach, South Korea

The Daecheon Beach 11th annual Mud Festival. Bank employees undergo exhausting army exercises in a company bonding day in the mud of a river estuary

Ethiopia

A dried-up river, shot from the air during the famine in 1978. The photographs in the book illustrate the dichotomy of our relationship with water – the role it plays in ancient religious rituals and in building communities, to its exploitation and the devastating result of too little or too much water

Calcutta, India

In the suburbs, a couple of miles from the centre of the city, people have no running water in their homes. The communal taps in the streets are turned on twice a day to enable people to wash and collect drinking water. Water is wasted because it is left running for a couple of hours each time

Baku, Azerbaijan

A sea mist shrouds the mixed pollution of oil and water on the shores of the Caspian Sea, 1994

Khaliajuri, Bangladesh

A bird’s eye view of part of the village reduced to an island by the flood waters which last more than half the year

Dhakin, Bangladesh

Bare-handed men and boys prepare to drag a hawser in the ship-breaking yard. Huge tankers are driven at full throttle and high tide on to the beach where they are broken up mostly by hand with scant regard for health and safety. It was not Berry’s intention to make a political book, nor an authoritative catalogue of man’s interactions with water – but to share the most memorable stories from his assignments that illustrate how water shapes our lives and what the future may hold