Off the coast of Sierra Leone, Nyangai is gradually sinking into the sea. Photographer Tommy Trenchard documents the lives of the last islanders. They don’t know when the end will come.
When Tommy Trenchard first saw Nyangai Island from a boat many years ago, he immediately felt the need to return to this place. “It was a breathtakingly beautiful piece of earth. Deserted, white beaches with coconut palms, washed by crystal-clear, greenish shimmering water, completely untouched,” says the British photographer, now 35, who was then an adventurous young backpacker in the so-called turtle archipelago off the coast was traveling from Sierra Leone, far away from all tourist trails. “The sight was pretty much every postcard cliché.”
Four years later, Trenchard docked on the island of his dreams – and was thrilled. About the idyll and the friendly people who make their living from fishing there: no electricity, no roads, no internet, but filled with a stunning warmth with which they welcomed him as one of the extremely rare visitors.
Portrait of British photographer Tommy Trenchard at work in South Africa
© Tommy Trenchard
“I had no idea the island was doomed,” says Trenchard, who had since settled in Cape Town. “Today I know that Nyangai is probably one of the most rising sea level threatened islands in the world.”