Big Blood

‘It is said that Giraavaru fishermen used to go regularly to a certain large sandbank (finolhu) at the southern end of their atoll to clean tuna fish after a good catch. Owing to a large amount of tuna fish offal and blood, the waters around that sandbank looked like a big pool of blood (maa ley gande'h). "Maa" (from the Tamil"Maa" _ lit . _ "Great" or "big".), meaning big, and "Lē" meaning blood.’

Big Blood is an ongoing project documenting youth culture in the capital city of The Maldives, Malé. 

Throughout my childhood, teenage years, and into my adulthood I’ve always gravitated to subcultures. Be that metalheads, skateboarders, punks, BMXers, playing in bands. I can’t think of a time growing up that I wasn’t connected to some tribe of some sort.

Being one of two siblings of a traumatic divorce I’ve often wondered if my kindredness with these subcultures comes from a need to be part of something, a movement, a community, a family. Growing up along side the formative years of the internet meant that discovering, connecting and engrossing myself within these subcultures was a lot more hands on than seems the norm these days. Human connection was your only link to your tribe.

Intrigued by whether children of divorce are more likely to gravitate towards fringe subcultures eventually led me to Malé. The divorce capital of the world and one of the most densely populated places on planet earth.