An overview: Postcards from the Frontline – The Exhibition

The Photos

Postcards from the Frontline brings together 350 photographs made by 350 Maldivians.

These images act as a collective illustration of 350 interpretations of what Maldives is to them.

Individually each image represents a unique voice that speaks of the photographer’s reality of life in the Maldives.

By breaking the boundaries between state of the art photo equipment and a simple mobile phone, these images speak directly to the audience with an urgency to be heard.

It is less of an exclamation about a great photo, and more of an appreciation of what the person who took the photo chose to portray.

The images are not forced to form a narrative, but rather allowed to exist in a space to be experienced as individual thoughts or memories.

By the minute differences in their general similarities, they exist together, complementing and contradicting themselves.

A Message to 350 recipients from around the world:

Hello.

This is your Postcard from the Frontline.

It comes to you from the frontlines of the battle against climate change. The Maldives, made up of a group of 1190 coral islands in the Indian Ocean, with its white beaches, blue seas, breadfruit tree-lined streets and verdant coral gardens, is one of the most beautiful places in the world. With its average land area at 1.5 metres above mean sea level, it is also one of the most vulnerable places on earth to the effects of global warming.

With increasing sea temperatures bleaching our corals and storm surges washing away our beaches, the Maldives has its days numbered. Here on our sandy shores, we are doing all we can to protect our home. Unfortunately for us, this is not enough.

For our country to survive, the carbon concentration in the atmosphere needs to be reduced to 350 parts per million, from the 390 ppm it is now.

We need your help in saving our islands. These islands are our homes, where our children play in the same sands that our forefathers walked on. They need to be protected at any cost. We ask you now, as people with an endangered future, to amplify our message before the world.

Postcards from the Frontline, the movement which brings you this message, is an initiative by Maldivians to inform the world of our plight. We are affiliated with the global climate campaign carried out by 350.org.

At the beginning, we asked all Maldivians to submit photos of things they would miss the most about their country. The photograph on the front of your postcard is one of the 6540 images that were submitted by Maldivians from all walks of life, over a period of one week. This amounts to one photo representation by every 56 Maldivians.

This postcard brings with it the wish of an entire country, and we leave our future in your hands.

Please help save the Maldives.