Judges
COTM | BTG SHORTLIST 2025
$30,000 MAIN AWARD
Louie Palu
Distant Early Warning
Louie Palu is a photographer and filmmaker whose work has examined social political issues, such as human rights and conflict for 30-years. He has been selected for a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, World Press Photo Award, and Best of Photojournalism award. His work has examined topics such as the drug war in Mexico, conflicts in Afghanistan and Ukraine, and changing geopolitics in the Arctic. Based in Washington D.C. he has also been focused on an ongoing in-depth project covering U.S. politics. His work has been widely published, and his documentary films have been broadcast and screened worldwide. His work is held in numerous collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and National Gallery of Art. His work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, National Portrait Gallery and Brooklyn Museum. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Distant Early Warning
The Arctic has passed a tipping point as nations use their military to stake claims to, occupy, or defend territory and resources on the Earth’s final frontier. The militarization of the Polar region was originally driven by an imagined idea that once the ice cap melts due to climate change, industry like oil, mining, fishing, and new ice-free shipping routes would be a new northern economy. The result would be that many countries that desire new economic opportunities would stake claims on this final geographic frontier. The changes in the region are exacerbated by the many pressures the Arctic faces mostly from climate change, territory claims, and the fracturing of the geopolitical order due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This new post-colonial Arctic era is once again altering indigenous cultures, reigniting past conflicts, increasing the use of nuclear submarines, and the recruiting of the Inuit to community- based security forces.
