Wildlife / Animals 2nd place winner

Sápmi is a land without borders, with eight distinct seasons, and reindeer husbandry. Where there’s room to breathe, to roam freely.

While the growing demand for metals and minerals calls for the expansion of devastating mines, old growth forests are cut clear for short term gains, and the climate crisis destabilizes the seasons, there’s also so much we can learn from these seemingly untouched lands.

For what is often called a wilderness are in fact living landscapes, where the Sami have lived and worked for thousands of years. A lifestyle that leaves no trace, rooted deeply in respect for all living things, in a world where man is part of nature and nature part of man.

A way of life that is almost invisible today, yet it holds a hopeful message for our future; an invitation to reconnect with nature - and ourselves.

Hanneke Van Camp is a nature photographer based in Belgium, but traveling through Arctic Europe in a small campervan most of the year. Trying to live a life closer to nature, she continues to push the boundaries of her comfort zone. Her soft landscape photos are often captured during sunrise hikes out on the fells, looking out over the environment around her. In this misty world full of suggestion, it’s as if time stands still. Because as vast, rugged or extreme the North may be, this feeling of tranquility always seems to prevail.

Hanneke’s love for and inspiration from nature has always been a big part of her life.
It led her to become a biologist and science communicator, and influences her work as a photographer today.

With her photos Hanneke hopes to inspire people to reconnect to nature, to rediscover its value, and to eventually become ambassadors for its conservation.