From BBC
A project on abandoned spaces reclaimed by nature has won the 2020 Earth Photo competition.
The winning series, by French photographer Jonathan Jimenez aka ‘Jonk’, includes images of a coffee shop and theatre in Abkhazia, a hotel in Portugal and a swimming pool in Italy. The work was chosen from more than 2,600 submissions.
Pulitzer-Prize-winning photojournalist Marissa Roth, who chairs the competition, said of Jonk’s work: “We chose Jonk’s compelling photographs as the overall winner because of the high degree of skill and vision they represent, and also because they exemplify Earth Photo by straddling the duality of human co-existence with nature.”
Forestry England and the Royal Geographical Society selected the winners in six categories from a shortlist of 50 photographs and four films.
The competition attempts to showcase the best in environmental visual media and aims to encourage discussion about the world and its inhabitants.
Yanrong Guo won the People category for her image, titled Miss, taken of a pipe-smoking man in Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture, the largest settlement of Yi people in China.
Charles Xelot won the Changing Forests category for Dead Tree #1, which shows a contorted grey trunk, two years after a forest fire, caused by humans, destroyed the landscape.
Joe Habben won the A Climate of Change category for an image which documents the effects of high water in Venice.
The video category was won by Sean Gallagher for Cambodia Burning, a short film revealing the effects of rampant deforestation in the country.
An exhibition of the winners and shortlisted entries will be on display in Forestry England forests, including Grizedale in the Lake District, Dalby Forest in the Yorkshire Moors, Moors Valley Country Park and Forest in Dorset, between now and spring 2021. The exhibition will also be on display at the Royal Geographical Society in London in early 2021.