Unsettling photos show the effects of climate change projected onto our everyday lives

Through confronting and visually arresting images, Delille and Piermartiri hope to challenge viewers to be more reflective — and proactive — about protecting the planet. (Giulia Piermartiri and Edoardo Delille/Courtesy L’Artiere via CNN Newsource)

It takes a moment to fully grasp what you’re seeing in Edoardo Delille and Giulia Piermartiri’s photographs of the Maldives. In one picture, a sea turtle appears to swim beside a couple on a motorbike; in another, a family of five pose in the hallway of their home, apparently standing beneath a diver floating in full scuba gear.

Appropriated from tourist snaps taken underwater in the Indian Ocean, the engulfing images allude to the scenario scientists believe could play out by the end of the century, if the climate crisis isn’t promptly addressed. With an average elevation of just one metre (3.3 feet) above sea level, the Maldives is the world’s lowest-lying country and therefore at substantial risk. Some reports predict that by 2050, 80 per cent of its land could become uninhabitable if sea levels continue to rise at their current rate. Delille and Piermartiri’s images illustrate this potential future.

Shot in 2019, and previously titled “Diving Maldives,” the series became the starting point for “Atlas of the New World,” a photobook recently published by L’Artiere (the images are also currently exhibited at Cortona on the Move, a photography festival in Tuscany). The photographers travelled to six highly-climate vulnerable areas in an effort to make tangible the extreme environmental realities forecast for this century. Their technique married scientific data with oneiric visuals, and they produced the images via an analog process involving a battery-operated projector connected to a flash.

“We found that to show the present was not enough,” Delille explained on a video call. “So we looked at how global warming will change the morphological shape of the landscape, directly at the end of the century, which better shows the gravity of the problem.”

Each of the book’s chapters — which additionally include California, Mont Blanc, Mozambique, China and Russia — employs the same tools to highlight a different version of a similar narrative, with striking results. In one image made in Paradise, California — a state where the average area burnt by wildfires is set to increase 77 per cent by 2100 if planet-heating pollution continues to rise — a man is pictured casually scanning the contents of his fridge as bright orange flames fill his kitchen. In the series looking at Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps and the site of rapidly melting glaciers, flowery green meadows are superimposed onto snow.

Acquired from different image banks, the visuals in each photograph are of landscapes that already experience similar weathers to those forecast; for example, images of the Nevada desert are projected onto homes in California, while those in the Mozambique series come predominantly from the Namib desert in Namibia.

Throughout, the pictures are accompanied by comparative data — primarily pulled from the United Nations Environment Programme, or sourced from more localized databases such as those that predict wildfires in the US — illustrating the disparities between current statistics and those projected for 2100 (presented both in text and infographics). Further underscoring the work is a collection of accompanying essays authored by various experts.

“Everything is shocking,” continued Delille, alluding to the weight of their research. Typically based in Florence, the photographers first became motivated watching global climate protests unfold in September 2019, as people around the world took to the streets demanding action; in Italy, more than one million reportedly took part.

Delille and Piermartiri, who spent a month or two in each place they covered, explained that while the photographs are obviously central to the project, the conversations they had with people on the ground, who appear in the images, were the real nucleus. “It was really important, before shooting, to do interviews,” Delille shared. “We really care about what they think about how global warming is affecting their lives. And in every place they had a totally different mentality about the problem.”

“The contrast in the Maldives was really strong,” explained Piermartiri. “It was totally green — electric motorbikes, solar panels — because they live with the nature. The main pollution came from tourists.” These visitors, added Delille, had everything imported: “Champagne, beer, Italian wine, American things… It was really strange to see. The local people will be submerged because of us — I also say me, because I went there by plane — but they live very ethically.”

In Mozambique, where they spoke to farmers and worked alongside an NGO focused on migration, the photographers were struck by how much the country is suffering from a climate crisis overwhelmingly driven by rich countries. As a continent, Africa contributes just 4 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions globally, while Mozambique, which in the last decade has suffered two of the worst droughts in its history, contributes only 0.22 per cent.

“Global warming is not democratic,” said Delille. “The richest people are doing these things (polluting the planet and impacting climate change) and poor people are suffering. They cannot simply move to a cooler place.”

Delille and Piermartiri decided early on, from those initial pictures made in the Maldives, that “Atlas of the New World” should be an academic-adjacent project as opposed to an artistic coffee table book. Then they started to see a wider potential. “We only understood later in the process that this project had been made for future generations,” Delille observed. “We would love to have this be used in schools.”

“It’s a kind of manual,” agreed Piermartiri, reflecting on the engagement they’ve already received from talks and exhibitions. “When kids look at our pictures, they become immediately conscious about the problem. These pictures speak about the future, and the most important thing is that the message passes on to them.”

By Zoe Whitfield, CNN