A portrait bust by Brancusi that was long considered lost has resurfaced and is now on public display in Bucharest, Romania.
A Long Lost Brancusi Goes on View in Bucharest
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Underwater Photographer of the Year: Alex Dawson wins 2024 award for stunning ‘Whale Bones’ image
Swedish photographer Alex Dawson has been awarded Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 for his stunning photo titled ‘Whale Bones’. The photo shows a sea diver beneath the Greenland ice sheet exploring the skeleton of a minke whale.
The Whale Bones beat more than 6,500 photographs from around the world, reported BBC.
“Whale Bones was photographed in the toughest conditions, as a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear witness to the carcasses. The diver’s suit and torch give it a ‘visiting alien’ feel. The composition flows effortlessly and takes your eye on the right journey to tell the story,” Alex Mustard, who chaired the judging panel of the awards, told BBC.
Mustard stressed about the challenging conditions under which Whale Bones was photographed.
“Photographed in the toughest conditions, a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear witness to slaughtered whales. The masterful composition invites me to consider our impact on the great creatures of this planet. Since the rise of humans, wild animals have declined by 85%. Today, just 4% of mammals are wildlife, the remaining 96% are humans and our livestock. Our way needs to change to find a balance with nature,” Mustard said.
Dawson took to Instagram to share the news of his big achievement. He wrote, “I am honoured to have been given the award of Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 in London this weekend with my winning image “Whale Bones”. This image was submitted in the Wide Angle category, with free diving model @freediveanna.
A huge thanks to the organisers, the jury and a big congratulations to all the other winners, among them @m.broen in the Wrecks category, @jenniferjostock as British Photographer of the Year, @nunosaunderwater in the Marine Conservation category, @rafafdezjr in the Behavior category and many more.
All of this could not have been achieved without the support from my family, friends & all my sponsors @unimaticwatches @nikoneurope @divesoft @reeldiving @maresjustaddwater @nauticamhousings @bigbluedivelights so thank you all for your love and support!”
The contest has 13 categories, including Macro, Wide-Angle, Behaviour and Wreck, as well as four for photos in British waters.
Social Media Reactions:
A social media user wrote,” I thought this was science fiction!”
A second added, “Fabulous image. Well deserved.”
“A haunting yet eerily beautiful image with an interesting backstory! Outstanding work and a very deserving winner, huge congratulations!” commented a third.
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Published: 20 Feb 2024, 08:42 PM IST
The Fourth Plinth sculpture is how to do public art — just look at the latest choice
Well, you can have a sweet potato, an ice cream van, an equestrian figure draped in green slime or a black cat. Seven models for the vacancies on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2026 and 2028 are on display in the National Gallery, and you can vote for which lucky sculpture gets two years on the most prominent public space in England. But it’s a band of the elite that gets to choose the shortlist, and the only name on the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group I actually recognised is that of Jon Snow, the newsreader.
Photographer Takes Adorable Pictures Of Derpy Dogs, Here Are 40 Of Them
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10 award-winning photos capture eerie underwater scenes of shipwrecks, rusted tanks, and a sunken passenger plane
10 award-winning photos capture eerie underwater scenes of shipwrecks, rusted tanks, and a sunken passenger plane
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Álvaro Herrero (Mekan)/UPY 2024
Martin Broen/UPY 2024
Two Chieftain tanks have been sunk among the reefs in the Red Sea in a tactical battle formation between 50 and 90 feet underwater.
The photographer Martin Broen said he wanted to “capture the symmetry of the Chieftain Tanks and strong presence of their 120mm guns.”
The shot won in the 2024 “wrecks” category.
Becky Kagan Schott /UPY 2024
“This is an image I’ve been trying to perfect for almost six years,” the photographer Becky Kagan Schott said.
The Kyle Spangler is a wooden two-masted schooner that sank in 1860 after crashing into another vessel, taking 15,000 bushels of wheat to the lake floor with it.
The wreck is considered one of the best-preserved schooners in the lake, according to Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Fabi Fregonesi/UPY 2024
The photographer Fabi Fregonesi traveled to the Virgo, a boat sunk to create a dive site near Recife, Brazil, and caught this once-in-a-lifetime shot.
“Seconds after that, the fish formation changed,” she said.
Alex Dawson/UPY 2024
The SS Thistlegorm was sunk off the coast of Egypt in 1941 while carrying a cargo of armored vehicles, motorbikes, artillery and ammunition, and railway equipment. It was spotted and bombed by German aircraft.
Much later, Jacques Cousteau tracked it down — more recently, the photographer Alex Dawson took this stunning image.
Christian Horras/UPY 2024
This passenger plane was — thankfully — scuttled on purpose in Aqaba. Still, it makes for an evocative image, thanks in part to the photographer’s attempt to make it look like the plane is about to take off.
“I placed a powerful light on a small tripod in the jet engine to create the effect of a powered engine,” Christian Horras said.
Álvaro Herrero (Mekan)/UPY 2024
The photographer Álvaro Herrero says he borrowed a cave-photography technique called the “butt light” to get this shot. That’s where one diver swims behind another, hidden from the camera, shining a light to illuminate them from behind.
Becky Kagan Schott /UPY 2024
Here, Kagan Schott captured the catastrophic damage that a crash caused to the bulk freighter SS Norman, which sank in 1895 in Lake Huron.
The ship “was hit so hard it cut the freighter in half sending it into the depths and taking the lives of three crew members,” she said.
Kieran Hatton/UPY 2024
The super-dreadnought HMS Audacious fell victim to a sea mine in 1914 while exploding and then sinking off the coast of Northern Ireland.
The photographer Kieran Hatton said he caught this shot when he saw another diver in the area and quickly passed her his light, while asking her to swim down the 13.5-inch gun barrels.
Álvaro Herrero (Mekan)/UPY 2024
Herrero said he had just a few minutes to get this shot of a Bell AH-1F Cobra sunk off the coast of Jordan.
“This photograph was one of the most challenging I have taken,” he said. In the short time they had left underwater, he decided to illuminate the windows and instructed the diver in the picture so that he could catch the light’s reflection in his mask.
Guilhem Duprat/UPY 2024
This German rescue steamer, the Parat, was sunk by Allied forces off the Norwegian coast in 1944 as it attempted to come to the aid of a German freighter that had run aground.
Today, “the dive site looks very barren initially,” the photographer Guilhem Duprat said. But once you get closer, “the wreck has become an oasis” covered in sea life, he said.
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A Fleet of Chiseled Cars by Kiko Miyares Adds New Meaning to Getting Caught in the Headlights
All images © Kiko Miyares
Typically, one avoids getting “caught like a deer in headlights,” but for Kiko Miyares, that’s the whole point. Chiseled from single pieces of timber, the Llanes, Spain-based artist fashions miniature, colorful cars with the high-beams turned on and an array of landscapes and tableaux in their sights.
“I immerse myself in a creative game where shapes, dimensions, and perspective intertwine to challenge expectations,” Miyares says.
The artist often experiments perception, carving wood into a wide range of objects like shoes, animals, and figures with elongated, surreal features. Miyares’ inspiration for the yellow headlights was sparked “from my fascination with the convergence of art and functionality,” he says. “My goal is to go beyond the conventional, merging aesthetics with utility and exploring how form can influence perception.”
Distinctively long, solid lights serve as the pieces’ supports, which can be propped up into slender columns as if they are driving straight toward the ground. “The car series still has no end, and depending on the creative moment, I keep modifying the concept,” Miyares says.
Find more on Instagram.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A Fleet of Chiseled Cars by Kiko Miyares Adds New Meaning to Getting Caught in the Headlights appeared first on Colossal.
Eerie photograph captures whales hunted off Greenland lying in their watery grave
An eerie image captures whale skeletons resting in their watery grave after being killed by hunters off Greenland. The whales had been taken to shore, stripped of the skin, blubber and meat, before being dragged back into the sea. There, they remain in the shallows to be consumed by marine invertebrates.
The photograph, taken by Alex Dawson, has won the Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 competition after being selected from over 6,500 entries. “Whale Bones,” was chosen as the winner because it “invites us to consider our impact on the great creatures of this planet,” panel chair Alex Mustard said in a statement emailed to Live Science.
“A very arresting image right from the start; for me this got bigger and better with every viewing,” Mustard said. “The diver’s suit and torch give it a ‘visiting alien’ feel, the composition flows effortlessly and takes your eye on the right journey to tell the story.”
Dawson, from Sweden, took the photograph off Tasiilaq in Greenland, a town with a population of around 2,000 people that sits on the coast of the North Atlantic, roughly 66 miles (106 kilometers) south of the Arctic Circle. In the image, a freediver approaches one of two whale skeletons from above, with a gap in the ice above and a flashlight illuminating the bones.
Related: Polar bear sleeping on tiny iceberg drifting in Arctic sea captured in heartbreaking photo
Minke whales are the smallest of the baleen whales — species that feed by sieving plankton through plates in their mouths. Common minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) are listed as of least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List. Because of their size, they were generally considered too fast and small by the commercial whaling industry, and were only hunted when the numbers of other, larger species were depleted. The industry largely ended in the 1980s, however some minke populations are still killed as part of annual hunts. In east Greenland, an average of nine minke whales are killed each year.
“In eastern Greenland the local hunters bring their catch and share it among each other,” Dawson said in the statement. “From a stable population of over 100,000 minke whales in the North Atlantic the hunters of Tasiilaq typically take less than a dozen.” Dawson said families from the town gather at low tide to cut off the skin, blubber and meat.
“Almost all the whale is consumed, however the skeleton is pulled back into the sea by the next high tide and the remains can be found in shallow waters where various marine invertebrates and fish pick the bones clean,” he said.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year competition was launched in 2015. This year, Dawson’s image was the overall winner from 130 finalists. A selection of the other winning and highly commended images can be seen below.
“At dusk, several dozen lemon sharks rise from the depths and surround the dive boat. Perched on the swim-step with my body half-submerged, I set out to take split shots. On this day the sea was rough, it was almost dark, and the sharks were lively and very curious,” he said in a statement. (Image credit: Rodolphe Guignard/UPY 2024)
The winners of the 2024 Underwater Photographer of the Year revealed
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Explore new depths and immerse yourself in the beauty beneath the water’s surface through this breathtaking collection of images from Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024.
The winners have been revealed for the annual contest, which gives a platform to awe-inspiring photography captured beneath the surface of oceans, lakes, rivers and even swimming pools.
This year, more than 6,500 underwater pictures were entered by photographers around the world, with scenes captured including two fish fighting with their mouths to a close-up of a grey whale’s eye and a Bryde’s whale engulfing an entire bait ball. ‘Whales dominated the winning pictures this year,’ the judges commented.
However, the image that truly mesmerised the panel is Alex Dawson’s ‘Whale Bones’, which shows a diver swimming among the enormous skeletons of slaughtered whales off the coast of Greenland.
‘Whale Bones was photographed in the toughest conditions,’ explains chair of the judging panel Alex Mustard, ‘as a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear witness to the carcasses. The composition invites us to consider our impact on the great creatures of this planet. Since the rise of humans, wild animals have declined by 85 per cent. Today, just four per cent of mammals are wildlife, the remaining 96 per cent are humans and our livestock. Our way needs to change to find a balance with nature.’
Scroll down to the very bottom to lay eyes on Dawson’s prize-winning shot. And on the way, gaze upon some of the category winners and shortlisted entries.
![This image, titled 'Twilight Smile', shows what the judges described as a 'magnificently moody lemon shark' off the island of Grand Bahama in the Bahamas. French photographer Rodolphe Guignard recalled the 'striking face-to-face encounter' with the shark at dusk, when 'several dozen' rose 'from the depths' and surrounded his dive boat. 'The sea was rough, it was almost dark, and the sharks were lively and very curious, not hesitating to come into contact with my [camera] housing,' he said. Judges awarded it third place in the 'Wide Angle' category and praised the 'atmospheric lighting below the surface', which 'perfectly complements a dramatic sunset', while the 'grin and the eye contact inject a sinister undercurrent to the picture'](https://www.mecreates.com/story/news/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/81447193-13100759-This_image_titled_twilight_smile_shows_what_the_judges_described-a-3_1708416036101.jpg)
![Topping the podium in the 'Wrecks' category, this eerie image by U.S photographer Martin Broen shows tanks 'sunk in 15m [49ft] to 28m [91ft] of water' in the underwater military museum of Aqaba, Jordan. 'In today’s troubled times, it is uplifting to see the apparatus of war put to peaceful use,' judges commented](https://www.mecreates.com/story/news/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/81447195-13100759-Taking_the_top_prize_in_the_Wrecks_category_Martin_Broen_s_Chief-a-5_1708416036105.jpg)
Photography collective celebrate milestone
A photograph of a procession of monks on display at Samaki Exhibition from February 24. Raphael Pech
Some of the capital’s most passionate photographers are about to mark a significant milestone. The Phnom Penh Photography Collective, a diverse group of photography enthusiasts from around the world, is thrilled to announce its first anniversary, and will celebrate it with a group art and photography exhibition.
Dubbed the Samaki Exhibition, the event promises to be a confluence of art, history and community spirit. It will open on February 24 at the Hiroshima House Art Gallery, on the grounds of Wat Ounalom pagoda in the capital’s Daun Penh district, where it will run for a full month.
The Hiroshima House project was originally founded with donations from the people of Hiroshima – a Japanese city largely destroyed by an atomic bomb during World War II – to share the history of their city with the Cambodian people. Today, Hiroshima House is home to around 65 children, many of whom previously lived on the streets, providing them with a nurturing environment.
The “samaki in Cambodia” theme was carefully chosen for its deep meaning. “Samaki” translates to unity, solidarity, bonds, and community in Khmer.
It is not just a celebration of the collective’s first year, but will support the important work of Hiroshima House, with 70 per cent of the art sales going directly to the education of the children living there. Additional support is being provided by Samai Rum Distillery and Humans of Cambodia.
Shunsuke Miyatake, founder of the photography collective, expressed his excitement about the exhibition, explaining that it will explore the myriad forms of samaki that permeate life in Cambodia, from familial ties and friendships to the bonds between people, nature and animals.
“It’s an honour to welcome our first anniversary with the ‘Samaki Exhibition’, in collaboration with Hiroshima House. This venue provides the perfect backdrop for our photographers and artists to showcase their interpretations of samaki in Cambodia,” he says.
An example of some of the aerial photography on display at the Samaki Exhibition. KeangHuy Bo
“Our aim is to highlight the stories of unity and community through our art, and support the educational endeavours of Hiroshima House,” he adds.
The exhibition will feature the works of over 50 photographers and 10 artists, both from Cambodia and abroad, including notable names like Adana Mam-Legros, RYYSA, Peap Tarr, Lisa Mam, NOWHERE Art Studio and BKK Studio Sauce.
Attendees on opening night can look forward to an immersive experience of art, photography and music, with performances by The Broken Cymbal and DJ sets.
“After learning about the history and the relationship between Hiroshima and Cambodia, and their goal, we came up with the theme samaki in Khmer,” says Miyatake.
He explains that for the exhibition, they request that each photographer and artist reflect on what “samaki in Cambodia” means to them, and then interpret it in their own unique way.
Since its inception in February 2023, the Phnom Penh Photography Collective has seen remarkable growth, attracting over 1300 followers on Instagram, reaching more than 700 on their Facebook Page, and gathering a 150+ strong community on Telegram.
The collective organises monthly themed photo walks, showcasing a variety of viewpoints. They welcome creatives of all types, aiming to serve as a broader hub, known as the “Phnom Penh Creative Collective”.
Winning images from Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 showcase life and death beneath the surface
The Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 competition provides a window into a magical world, with stunning imagery that provokes thought and contemplation.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year is an annual competition based in the UK that celebrates images taken beneath the surface of the sea, lakes, ponds, and even swimming pools and attracts entries from around the world. The outstanding quality of this year’s images is a showcase of what can be achieved with a range of camera equipment, and not just the best underwater cameras on the market. This year saw 13 category winners and 4 special award winners including, of course, the coveted eponymous award.
• See our guide for the best underwater drones
This year’s title of Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 has been awarded to Alex Dawson for his image titled ‘Whale Bones‘, pictured above. Dawson triumphed over more than 6500 underwater images submitted from all over the world. Whale Bones depicts a freediver examining the effects of whaling whilst diving amongst the giant skeletons of discarded whale carcasses in Greenland.
Chair of the judging panel Dr Alexander Mustard MBE, describes the image as being “photographed in the toughest conditions.” He goes on to explain, “as a breath-hold diver descends below the Greenland ice sheet to bear witness to the carcasses. The composition invites us to consider our impact on the great creatures of this planet. Since the rise of humans, wild animals have declined by 85%. Today, just 4% of mammals are wildlife, the remaining 96% are humans and our livestock. Our way needs to change to find a balance with nature.”
It was not the only image to be given an award, with Up & Coming Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 being awarded to Lisa Stengel from the United States for her image of a mahi-mahi fish catching a sardine, taken in Mexico and titled ‘Window of Opportunity‘. Stengel used a very fast shutter speed of 1/3200s, and the use of her hearing to catch the decisive moment. The latest camera technology is enabling new and exciting images to be created underwater, resulting in scenes we have never seen before.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 is a UK-based competition that highlights British waters by including 4 categories dedicated to the home isles. An award for British Underwater Photographer of the Year 2024 was also given and this year Jenny Stock came out on top with her image ‘Star Attraction‘. Stock highlights the ‘often overlooked’ with her psychedelic image of a sea urchin taken while exploring the west coast of Scotland.
The competition prides itself in raising awareness about marine conservation and has teamed up with the Save Our Seas Foundation to present the Marine Conservation Photographer of the Year 2024 award. Portuguese photographer Nuno Sá was this year’s recipient with his photo titled ‘Saving Goliath‘, which depicts beachgoers in Portugal trying to save a stranded sperm whale that had been struck by a ship. Although not taken underwater, it provides a great insight into the effects of life under the surface. The image gives hope that humanity still cares about our waters but also highlights the need for action.
The 2024 competition showcases the very best in underwater photography, and the full list of category winners is a sight to behold.
For more information on shooting action and adventure see our guides on the best travel drones, the best underwater cameras for fish, and the best action cameras.
