Gardi believes that only honest attention wins the trust and reaches the real emotions and personal stories of people entangled in such life-threatening situations. He uses this approach to identify early symptoms of catastrophes before they develop into sensational news stories or gain widespread attention.

Gardi spent two years following how the Roma (gypsy) minorities trying to deal with their growing poverty, declining social status and appalling living conditions in a dozen Eastern European countries. He has traveled regularly to Afghanistan and Pakistan to document life in a region in a state of insecurity and a downward spiral that is dragging these countries back to open warfare.

In recent years, his attention has gradually turned to reporting the local harbingers of the global water crisis. This has evolved into "Facing Water Crisis," his most ambitious photography project to date. It features an expanding series of individual stories about the most life-threatening environmental crisis mankind has ever faced, covering numerous heavily affected regions around the world.