Photography News | Issue 66 | photographynews.co.uk
20
SWPA
Second place
Polytunnel byMarco Kesseler
This project looks under the surface and examines the hidden landscape within the spaces in which our food is produced. It also looks at cyclical changes and the relationship between chaos and control in the natural environment. In the polytunnel, the seasons are stretched and softened within a polythene skin, creating its own cosmos. In these unseen spaces, nature vies for territory within a man-made colony.
Right Rows of asparagus line the fertile soil of the tunnel ©Marco Kesseler, UK, second place, Professional: Landscape 2019 Sony World Photography Awards
Third place
Hierotopia by Kieran Dodds
Ethiopia has lost 95% of its native forests due to human activity in the last century. What remains surrounds circular Tewahedo Orthodox churches; these ancient canopies are protected as a tenet of faith. The country’s population will double in the next 30 years, further pressurising these natural treasures. Thousands of forest fragments exist across Northern Ethiopia – green islands of biodiversity in an expanding sea of agriculture – but a mere fraction are viable. Incremental erosion from grazing and subsistence
agriculture is destructive: thinned forest edges kill the canopy from the outside in. To their guardians, each forest is a miniature Garden of Eden, essential to the building’s dignity. One priest described the trees as “the clothes of the church”. The forest’s religious significance is equalled by its ecological function: these sacred oases raise water tables, lower temperatures, block destructive winds and are home to yield-boosting pollinators. These genetic repositories are vital for human survival in Ethiopia.
Left Debre Mihret Arbiatu Ensesa church near Ambesane surrounded by subsistence agriculture © Kieran Dodds, UK, third place, Professional: Landscape 2019 SonyWorld Photography Awards
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To see all the winning images, go to the website worldphoto.org
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