The proud, penetrating gaze of Mak Muji, a midwife who serves the 18,000 villagers living in and around Jakarta’s largest landfill site and who moonlights as a trash-picker, has won the Earth Photo competition for 2019.
The photograph, titled ‘The Landfill Midwife’ by Elisabetta Zavoli, scooped both the top prize as well as the category prize for ‘People’ at an awards ceremony that took place at the Royal Geographical Society, London.
Earth Photo is an international photography project developed jointly by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society which seeks to stimulate conversations about our world, its inhabitants and our treatment of both.
The judges said they were particularly impressed by the way Zavoli lit her portrait, balancing the exposure so that Mak Muji is powerfully illuminated, with the looming trash heap retaining a shadowy and menacing presence. Despite this spite of this sense of menace, they said the portrait remains an optimistic one; Mak Muji’s stance is strong and confident and her gaze defiant.
Art collective Aennor Bleu won the category prize for ‘Nature’ with ‘Party’s Over’, one of a series of photographs which aims to drive home the urgent need to reduce the role that plastic plays in our daily lives, while the prize for ‘Place’ was awarded to Sue Flood for ‘Big Blue Berg’, a hauntingly beautiful photograph of melting ice that aims to enchant rather than appall.
David Green triumphed in the ‘Changing Forests’ category with his photograph ‘Old Hedge, Venton Wood, Devon’ – an image that is warm, soft and saturated with green.
Other extraordinary shortlisted photographs shown below show the accusatory stare of one of the Silent Walk marchers in London, the challenging glare of a young oyster harvester in the Sherbro River Delta, and the medley of curious, confused and tearful gazes of the Rohingya refugees as they wait patiently in line for food.
The international photography competition aims to stimulate conversations about our world, its inhabitants and our treatment of both. The 2019 exhibition was selected by a distinguished panel with expertise in the fields of photography, film, geography and the environment chaired by Award-Winning photographer Marissa Roth.
The gallery will be displayed at the Royal Geographical Society, London, from 6 July – 22 August 2019.
The top prize was awarded to Elisabetta Zavoli for The Landfill Midwife, a confrontational portrait of Mak Muji, a midwife who serves the 18,000 villagers living in and around Jakarta’s largest landfill site and who moonlights as a trash-picker
The category prize for ‘Place’ was awarded to Sue Flood for Big Blue Berg: in this hauntingly beautiful photograph Sue aims to enchant rather than appall, believing that ‘you have to show people how beautiful something is for them to want to protect it’.
The category prize for ‘Changing Forests’ was awarded to David Green for Old Hedge, Venton Wood, Devon, an image that is warm, soft and saturated with green, ‘the colour and feel of North Devon’
The category prize for ‘Nature’ was awarded to art collective Aennor Bleu for Party’s Over, one of a series of photographs which aims to drive home the urgent need to reduce the role that plastic plays in our daily lives
Sebastian Voltmer, ‘Line Up Milky Over Stonehenge’ – Pictured is the Milky Way and the Summer Triangle over Stonehenge. In the early evening the photographer walked to the monumental stones of Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England
Aennor Bleu, ‘Non-Biodegradable’ – According to the Royal Geographical Society 2019’s shortlist is made up of photographs that ‘ask questions – often uncomfortable ones – which encourage the viewer to engage with the subject matter and stories behind it’
David Alpert, ‘March of the Echinoderms 6’ – Echinoderms are marine animals recognizable by their radial symmetry. They include animals as starfish, sea urchins, sand dollars and sea cucumber
Aennor Bleu, ‘Lunchtime’ – This year’s Earth Photo competition was developed in partnership with Forestry England and explores the themes of people, place, nature and the new category of changing forests.
Debbie Humphry, ’14th June 2018, Remebering Grenfell 1′ – The image was taken on the Silent walk one year on, remembering the losses and inequities of the Grenfell Tower fire in Kensington, London
Jose Luis Rodriguez, ‘Hostile Territory’ – ‘Surrounded by factories that cause a lot of pollution, this little owl manages to obtain its food and raise its young in an increasingly hostile territory’
Doron Talmi, ‘After First Snow 1’ and ‘After First Snow 2’ – This image taken from a helicopter illustrates the numerous channels and creeks on the face of the earth. Landmannalaugar is famous for its multicoloured hills and slopes, but after the snow in October the whole area appeared monochromatic
Luke Brown, ‘Abernethy Forest’ – According to the Royal Geographical Society visitors to the exhibition ‘will find themselves simultaneously enchanted by places so beautiful they appear unearthly, and haunted by landscapes devastated by natural disasters or human misuse and abuse’
Greg Funnell, ‘Oyster Harvesting, Sherbro River Delta 2’ – Fishing boats are seen on a mudbank at low tide in the Sherbro River Delta in the west African country of Sierra Leone
David Rippin, ‘Winter’s Evening Light in the Lake District’ – The 2019 exhibition was selected by a distinguished panel with expertise in the fields of photography, film, geography and the environment and chaired by Award-Winning photographer Marissa Roth
Larry Louie, ‘In Line for Food’ – Confused and tearful gazes of the Rohingya refugees as they wait patiently in line for food. At least a million Rohingya refugees fled the persecutions in Myanmar. Many of them have settled in overcrowded camps among the hills outside of Cox Bazaar
Greg Funnell, ‘Oyster Harvesting, Sherbro River Delta 3’ – Women are pictured purchasing fish at dawn from a young fisherman who has been out night fishing on Bonthe Island, Sierra Leone
David Rippin, ‘Forest Depths’ – Earth Photo is an international photography project developed jointly by Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society which seeks to stimulate conversations about our world, its inhabitants and our treatment of both
Luke Brown, ‘Fallen Scotch Pine and Silver Birch’ – The selected images will be on show at the Royal Geographical Society’s gallery on Exhibition Road, London from 6 July – 22 August
Elizabeth Streeter, ‘RAW South America – Changing Forests’ – ‘Plastic pours into the Amazon river in the floating village of Belen in Iquitos, Peru,’ the photographer said. ‘I naively thought that the Amazon river and rainforest were as pristine as the BBC documentaries show, but unfortunately, the truth is that they too are being destroyed by plastic’
Elizabeth Streeter, ‘RAW South America – Iquitos Floating Village’ – In addition to the exhibition in the Royal Geogrpahical Society’s Pavilion in London, Earth Photo will also tour to Forestry England venues in Grizedale Forest (Cumbria), Moors Valley (Dorset) and Fineshade Wood (Northamptonshire)
Joshua Sneade, ‘Untitled’ and ‘Untitled 2’ – A girl looks after her younger siblings inside their tent. The images focus on the nomadic people who live in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. These people reside in tents and caves in the mountains, in separate family groups, and move every few months, going higher in summer and to lower ground during the winter
Larry Louie, ‘The Water Pump’ – More than 60 per cent of the Rohingya refugees are women and children, with an estimated 80,000-plus newborns this year. It is estimated that there are over 580,000 children in the refugee camps
Jeremy Young, ‘The Thicks – Yesterday’s Tomorrow #2’ and ‘The Thicks – Yesterday’s Tomorrow #3’- ‘This series was made in Staverton forest, an ancient oak forest near the Suffolk coast. A small area of the forest, known as the Thicks, has been unmanaged for the last 200 and now contains many ancient oaks and oak stumps overgrown by holly and birch’
David Alpert, ‘March of the Echinoderms 1’ – ‘As I descended into the dark murky waters of False Bay, the sea floor started to come into focus. I suddenly realised that the whole sea floor was alive and writhing as far as the visibility allowed one to see. I had never seen anything like it’
Glyn Thomas, ‘Northern Lights’ – ‘Just outside Grundarfjörður, at about 1am, the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights were at their strongest. A group of us had been photographing all evening, and this was the absolute highlight, with the green and purple colours in the sky so vivid, over the mountains and farmland below’
Larry Louie, ‘Returning Home’ – Of the Rohingya Muslims forced into the refugee camps, Louie says: ‘The lucky ones are with family. Many others are essentially fending for themselves and their younger siblings on their own. Bangladesh, being one of the poorest countries in the world, really has no means to help these people’
Greg Funnell, ‘Oyster Harvesting, Sherbro River Delta’ – Rugiatu (foreground) and Mabinty, collect oysters at low tide on a mudbank in the Sherbro River Delta in Sierra Leone in May 2018
David Green, ‘Ancient Path, Halsdon Woods, Devon’ – ‘We shun the word wilderness as something which describes a bygone age in another country a primordial memory from an imagined past’
David Green, ‘Old Hedge, Venton Wood, Devon’ – ‘I love finding tracts of wildness like this boundary hedge at the edge of a field, which has grown free of the barbed-wire that imprisoned it’
David Green, ‘Hidden Lake, Dean Wood, Devon’ – Earth Photo will run from 6 July to 22 August. Opening times are Monday through to Friday from 10.00am-5.00pm, plus Saturdays from 10.00am-4.00pm. The exhibition will be closed on Sundays and bank holidays
Sue Flood, ‘Nenets Camp’ – The Nenets, also known as Samoyed, are a Samoyedic ethnic group native to northern arctic Russia. Pictured is a Nenet reindeer herders’ camp in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region in Russia’s Yamal peninsula
Sue Flood, ‘Inside the Chum’ – A nomadic Nenet woman is pictured inside her home in a reindeer herders’ camp in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Region in Russia’s Yamal peninsula. Global warming has had a profound effect on Nenets reindeer herders, as certain lands they need to cross to follow migration patterns are only accessible during winter
Marco Casino, ‘Thank You for Smoking #01’ – Drone capture of an arson of unsorted wastes and plastics in an agricultural field near Sant’Angelo in Formis, in the municipality of Capua, southern Italy
Marco Casino, ‘Thank You for Smoking #07’ – ‘In Caserta, the province with the worst quality of life in Italy, tobacco marks the flat countryside. In the last 20 years mafias were capable of lobbying local and national governments and modifying laws. They also contaminated great chunks of their own backyard, forcing landlords and farmers to take money for excavated spaces, littering the landscape with heavy metals, solvents and chlorinated compounds, often taken from northern Italy and other EU countries’
Debbie Humphry, ’14th June 2018, Remebering Grenfell 2′ – The photographer said: ‘People are related to their environment in terms of the spaces they occupy for protest and visibility, as well as the unequal spaces in which they are positioned: spaces of inequity, spaces of courage and spaces of resistance’
Mark Phoenix, ‘Ariel View – Chong Khneas Floating Village, Tonlé Sap Lake, Cambodia’ – ‘Everything happens on the water – going to church, pig farming, going to school, going to the pub, shopping, meeting friends or just going for a quick joy ride and their main occupations of fishing and tourism’
Mark Benham, ‘Forest of the Crosses #3’ and ‘Forest of the Crosses #5’ – ‘The silhouettes of blackened tree crosses rising up from hillsides in Odena in the north-west of Catalonia, Spain, are a haunting memorial to a forest which was ravaged by wildfires in 2015’
Mona Miri, ‘Diptych, Melting Glacier – Iceberg Lake MT’ – ‘In the image on the right taken in 2017 at Iceberg lake in Grinnell Glacier, you can see the receding icebergs and the receding mouth of the glacier which now is a lake. The image on the left taken in 1910 by John Morton, in collaboration with University of Montana image archives, shows the peak of Grinnell’
Marco Casino, ‘Thank You for Smoking #04’ – Night arson of a buffalo farm propriety of a well-know camorra family of Marcianise, the Bellopede. At the beginning of 2018 anti-mafia magistrates feared again the idea of setting up a ‘curfew’ in Marcianise. The latest was established in 1998, after a series of murders for Camorra. That year the town of almost 40 thousand citizens recorded over 50 murders for Mafia
Luke Brown, ‘Loch Garten’ – Loch Garten is a large Highland freshwater loch near Boat of Garten, in the Strathspey area of the Cairngorms National Park, in Scotland