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2020 Winners

Courtesy of Yoong Wah Alex Wong

Yoong Wah Alex Wong

Dr. Yoong Wah Alex Wong is a versatile and well equipped photographer and videographer, who takes his audience on magical and mysterious journey, through landscapes that are shrouded in mist and fog at the borderlands. His research in photography, video and cinematography works focus on borderlands, climate change, human and nature interrelationship issues. Wong's photographs are always memorable, can be surrealistic moment, and display resonance and meanings that are timeless. The cinematic influence in Wong's photographs is unmistakable and many of his photographs appear as if they are stills from an epic journey. His latest photography and video works "Vanishing White" series critically examine and explore the fragile world of ice. 

Professional: Winning Entry: The Vanishing White

The journey across the frozen Lake Baikal is part adventure documentation, part environmental saga. My artistic search is to arrest the moments of epic encounter of the permafrost landscape. This series intend to showcase the exceptional formation and peculiar facet of the oldest (25 million years ago), deepest (5,300 feet) and biotically diverse existing fresh water lake on earth, during the coldest period in winter. This lake harbors more species than any other lake in the world, and many of them are endemic. More than half of the approximately 2500 animal species and 30% of the 1000 plant species are endemic. Unfortunately, by the end of this century, the climate of the Baikal region will be warmer and wetter, particularly in winter. As the climate changes, ice cover and transparency, water temperature, wind dynamics and mixing, and nutrient levels are the key abiotic variables that will shift, thus eliciting many biotic responses. The frozen layers are moving, breaking, thawing, retreating and daunting, just as the frozen lake is solid on the surface, yet fragile when the water currents flows underneath it. These marvelous yet temporary ice layers vanishes as the temperature rises; resistive and short lived. 

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