Earth Photo 2025 Award Reveals Human Impact on the Planet
Real Hacker Staff
Photo credit: Vivian Wan and Lorenzo Poli
The winners of the Earth Photo 2025 Award have been announced and a photographer whose work focuses on a huge open-pit copper mine in Chile has taken home the top prize and £1,000 ($1,350),
Lorenzo Poli visited the alien landscape of the Chuquicamata mine which plunges nearly 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) into the Earth. “Taken from above, the photograph shows the vastness of Chuquicamata and the marks we make on the natural world,” the competition writes.
Poli’s shot ‘Autophagy’ was given the Earth Photo 2025 Award.‘The Kingdom of Accumulation’ by Lorenzo Poli‘Mining Infinity’ by Lorenzo Poli‘Arteries of Ambition’ by Lorenzo Poli‘The Mountain of Silver’ by Lorenzo Poli
The Royal Geographical Society – Climate of Change Award, worth £500 ($673), went to Liam Man for his project “Carcass of the Ice Beast” which looks at thermally reflective blankets placed on the Rhone Glacier in 2009 to slow its melting that are now in tatters.
“Today, these coverings hang in tatters, like the torn skin of a dying giant”, Man explains. By anthropomorphizing the glacier, the photographer invites us to “bear witness to the cryosphere’s beauty and its vulnerability”.
‘Tattered Shreds’ by Liam Man‘Skin and Bones’ by Liam Man‘Once Upon a Time’ by Liam ManThe Forestry England – Forest Ecosystem Award, worth £500, selected by Forestry England, goes to Mateo Borrero for ‘Waterline’. A Ticuna man stands on the side of a 500-year-old Ceiba tree in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. The tree has a water line that marks where the water level reaches during the rainy season which goes from April to May. This photograph was taken in May 2024 and by that time, the level should be at the maximum, however, the rains were scarce by then due to global warming.The New Scientist Editors Award, for a photographer with the potential of an image spread in the Aperture section of the magazine, goes to Vivian Wan, who will also receive mentoring with Tim Boddy, Picture Editor, New Scientist. On the Trinity River in Willow Creek, California, Yurok Tribal members and biologists Oshun O’Rourke and Yadao Inong, along with technicians, install rotary screw traps: specialized devices used to catch live fish for annual disease monitoring and to track migration patterns. For centuries, the Klamath Basin has been the cultural and ecological heart of the Yurok Tribe, who identify as “Indians of the river and coast.” The basin’s waters have long sustained fishing, eel hunting, and above all, the sacred salmon—central to Yurok spirituality, identity, and livelihood. Yet decades of “colonization, land dispossession, and environmental degradation have severely impacted this once-thriving ecosystem.” The Yurok Tribal Fisheries Program leads efforts to restore the basin’s health, aiming to heal both land and community. Wan’s photographic work honors this process of reclamation and resilience, capturing the intersection of Indigenous knowledge, ecological science, and the enduring fight for justice and cultural survival.
Created in 2018 by Forestry England, the Royal Geographical Society, and Parker Harris, Earth Photo is a world-leading program in its eighth year, engaging with still and moving image makers to showcase the issues affecting the climate and life on our planet.
Out of over 1,582 entries, a judging panel made up of experts from the fields of photography, film, geography, and environment selected the Earth Photo 2025 shortlist: 195 images and eight videos by 40 photographers and filmmakers from around the world. A selection of outstanding photography and film projects were chosen as the Earth Photo 2025 award winners.
