About the Photographer and Cover Photo

In 2004, I visited the fishing village of Totope, on Ghana's coast.At the community meeting I attended, residents spoke of clean water as their most pressing need.When I returned six years later, piped water had arrived, but the village had all but disappeared beneath the waves.An elder told me, "We were once three miles from the sea."Living in a large Australian city, climate change had been a somewhat distant and abstract reality.Suddenly it felt visceral and present.I began shooting a series of portraits documenting the impacts of rising sea levels on the people living in Totope and other nearby communities.