Nauru, in Oceania, has gone from the richest country to one of the poorest in the world in less than twenty years. Its story could be a literary fiction in which delusions of grandeur and greed have transformed an island paradise into an ecological, economic and social disaster. On the atoll, columns of coral – remnants of a century of phosphate mining – stand as far as the eye can see. In Shipwrecked Island, Richard Pak submits his negatives to a chemical treatment based on phosphoric acid (H3PO4) which alters the emulsion, sparing only the red range. The aesthetic rendering takes us towards (science) fiction or mythological fable. The characters, princes and princesses, weightlifting presidents and beauty queens are carried away in a ballet of sweepers struggling to chase the phosphate dust from the surface of the island.