honorable mention
Eleonora Bianchi united statesPhoto © Eleonora Bianchi
title
the cloud fisherman
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entry description
White light dawns on Marina beach in Chennai, India. Colorful boats lay on the sand in front of the shoreline as the fishermen, wading in the water, line up with faces pointed toward the horizon. Some of them bend down to grab the ends of the long wet fishing nets. They pass them back to each other like a reverse relay race and slowly begin to pull. When they finally open the nets, along with fish find plastic trash. Cheap and easy to produce, plastic has become the preferred material for single-use packaging since the 1950s, becoming a ubiquitous environmental pollutant. Of 8.3 billion tons of plastic generated so far, more than 75% is discarded as waste, and parts of it ended in the oceans. Some articles talk about tourists littering the beaches, or monsoons changing the currents. One thing is certain. When the Chennai fishermen separated the fish from the trash, the plastic remained there, ready to be picked up by the high tide only to show up in the nets again, the following morning.about the photographer
I joined Berkeley Journalism school in 2020 as an International Master's candidate, focusing my career in Investigative, photography, and storytelling journalism. Before becoming a journalist I studied International Relations and Human Rights, which gave me the opportunity to travel and acquire a deep knowledge of the international geopolitical landscape. I am currently living in California and when I'm not keeping busy chasing stories, you can find me around experimenting with photography.back to gallery