WINNERS

Five Elements. One Void.

  • Photographer
    Chris Krey, Germany
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention

Alone in Iceland's interior – in cold, wind, and absolute silence – I experienced something between fear, reverence, and a melancholy I cannot fully name. A technical field camera on medium format film was the only fitting response: a process demanding the same commitment this landscape took millennia to earn. In Ninjutsu, Ko – emptiness – is not absence. It is the fifth element, the void that contains all others: earth, water, fire, and wind – each a force in nature, each a state within us. These are not just landscapes. Standing inside them, I finally recognised the melancholy as my own.