A visual monument that poignantly captures how Europe deals with the threat of global warming.
For four years, Carl De Keyzer spent four months a year traveling the coasts of Europe, from the far north to the south. He photographed alienating landscapes, desolate beaches, deserted hotels, wintry piers and dramatic cloudbursts.

It seems to be an accepted fact that the sea level will rise dramatically before the end of the century as a result of climate change, partly through the fault of us humans. Prognoses vary from a few decimetres to a few meters. Moments Before the Flood is a visual, photographic investigation into how Europe is coping with this difficult-to-gauge threat.
The continent will feel the impact most keenly along its coasts, where the mainland feels less like solid ground, the Old World crumbles into the waves, and the future menaces the past. From the rocky West Coast of Ireland to the salt marshes and mud flats of the northern Netherlands and the beaches of the Aegean, the coast is a perennially unstable phenomenon, the question mark of the mainland. That is precisely what makes it such a fascinating subject for a photographic study of uncertainty. This project does not focus solely on the future hazard, but also looks at earlier forms of coastal protection in European history and reflects on how Fortress Europe is dealing with other kinds of flows and floods today.

The sixty-five thousand-kilometre coastline of Europe is strewn with useless defences from bygone ages.
Moments Before the Flood investigates how Europe is preparing for the possibility of a dramatic rise of the sea level, and asks to what extent our efforts will ultimately prove futile. Are dyke reinforcements and seawalls the modern-day counterparts of those historic forts and defence lines? This series places great emphasis on that latent tension, on our inability to determine the reality of the threat and the effectiveness of our defences.