honorable mention
Paul Christener switzerlandPhoto © Paul Christener
title
In Search of Silence
Spitsbergen island is located 600 miles away from the North Pole. In winter, the temperature there is generally 30° Fahrenheit below the temperature here, at the edge of the Alps in Central Europe. But this winter is different. It was not colder in Spitsbergen than in Berlin when I made this image.
This environment influences my work. I try to reduce the complexity and uncertainty in which I live to a minimum. Every moment in our lives passes by. As you read these sentences, time is slipping away into the past. A photograph stops time and preserves it. A single moment, like this, here. A moment captured with a camera mounted on a tripod.
In 1968, Louis Armstrong produced the song "What A Wonderful World." That song went through my head when I waited for the right moment for that Image, and I asked myself, what will be in fifty years?
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entry description
More than seven billion people live on earth, and that number is growing. The earth is heating up, and with it, sea levels are rising. Storms are becoming wilder, droughts longer, water scarcer. Glaciers are melting away. People are fleeing from wars or miserable economic conditions in their countries. Book writer T.C. Boyle described the most powerful man in the world as a clown. Orson Welles's "1984" reappears in book charts. The Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Science is at 2½ minutes before twelve. The clock was only once nearer to twelve, which was in 1953—the world then was on the brink of an atomic war.Spitsbergen island is located 600 miles away from the North Pole. In winter, the temperature there is generally 30° Fahrenheit below the temperature here, at the edge of the Alps in Central Europe. But this winter is different. It was not colder in Spitsbergen than in Berlin when I made this image.
This environment influences my work. I try to reduce the complexity and uncertainty in which I live to a minimum. Every moment in our lives passes by. As you read these sentences, time is slipping away into the past. A photograph stops time and preserves it. A single moment, like this, here. A moment captured with a camera mounted on a tripod.
In 1968, Louis Armstrong produced the song "What A Wonderful World." That song went through my head when I waited for the right moment for that Image, and I asked myself, what will be in fifty years?
back to gallery