Unless you were expressly told, you wouldn’t necessarily know it was a photograph. A splash of vivid yellows and blues, the above image looks more like someone’s thrown a bucket of paint at a canvas, Jackson Pollock-style. Taken by Spanish photographer Manuel Enrique González Carmon, it’s called ‘Anatomy Lesson’ and is an overhead shot of a copper mine in Huelva, southern Spain.
In his own words: ‘Minerals, water and water currents are the ingredients with which nature creates these ephemeral landscapes. With each rainy period the canvas is transformed. This canvas is actually a raft of toxic waste.’
It’s enough to leave you open-mouthed – both because it’s so breathtaking and because it’s so worrying. We really are wrecking the planet, and here it is for all to see.
Ranging from eerie forest landscapes to dramatic mountain ranges and hypnotising architectural patterns, the 2021 EPSON Pano Awards honours the world’s best panoramic photographs, and Carmon’s image was one of this year’s winners. Here are a few more of our faves from 2021.
‘Eternal Triangle’ by Joshua Hermann
‘Tonal Intersection’ by Mark Brierley
‘Shining Night’ by Daniel Trippolt
‘City in the Clouds’ by Florian Kriechbaumer
‘Jellyfish Lake’ by Oleg Gaponyuk
‘Hidden Lake’ by Marsel van Oosten
‘The Mountain Dreamer’ by Max Rive
‘Don’t Fence Me In’ by Ray Jennings
‘Torres del Paine’ by Andrew Dickman
‘Gastlosen’ by Oliver Wehrli
‘Gentoo Penguin Colony’ by Tom Sheckels
‘Serpentine’ by Peter Harrison
‘Sunset over Kyrgyz Mountains’ by Yaz Loukhal
More stunning photography:
These award-winning photographs have really made us want to explore the world again
These incredible deep-sea shots explore the mysteries of the ocean floor