Located in the East Wing of Somerset House London, itself a sustainable building refurbishment, the second Syngenta Photography Award shows over 90 thought-provoking large-scale photographs on the theme of ‘Scarcity-Waste’, highlighting the conflict between the increasing scarcity of natural resources in a world where demand appears to be insatiable while climate change has a variety of effects and, in contrast, the huge amount of waste that is created and has to be dealt with by reprocessing or landfill. “As nearly one billion people go to bed hungry worldwide, others are wasting over half of the food they buy”. The winners, announced on March 10th, were selected from over 2000 submissions by photographers from over 100 countries on the basis of photographic quality and thoughtful response to the subject.
This stunning exhibition of photographs illustrates many aspects of ‘Scarcity-Waste’ including the relentless expansion of cities with a devastating impact on traditional ways of life and natural landscapes, mounds of waste such as tyres and mobile phones, the fog that surrounds cities in China, plus portraits of some of the people who work for low wages reprocessing the waste that we create. There is however optimism; the final section ‘Inspiring Inventions that could change the world’ illustrates new technologies such as solar-therm power plants.
This is an exhibition that is worth visiting for both the quality of photography and for the way these international photographers illustrate the depict the subject in locations all around the world.
