Anthrosphere II

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Jiayi Lin, China

‘Anthrosphere II’ is a visual meditation on the petroglyphs scattered across the arid mountains of Ningxia, carved from late-Neolithic to dynastic times. Eroded over millennia, many of the carvings appear as faint, nearly indecipherable scratches on desert stone. Yet, in their resilience, the distinctive visual qualities of the petroglyphs offer a refreshing reappraisal of Chinese cultural iconography. ‘Anthrosphere II’ brings the raw, primal visages of archaic tribesmen and tribeswomen into intimate proximity with the modern viewer, inviting a stare down that is arrestingly human.

Hello! I am Jiayi Lin, a student at St. George's School, an independent boarding school in Rhode Island. I am deeply captivated by world civilisations and societies, and the histories through which they weave into complex, intercultural matrices. Since youth, I have also been fascinated with the mechanisms of photography, and the liberation that it bestows upon humans to distil fleeting moments for the world to savour. In recent years, my love for these two disciplines has translated into projects that leverage photography as a pathway to cultural and historical meditation.

Awards International Photography Awards 2024
- Three official selections
- One honourable mention

Scholastic Art and Writing Awards 2024
- Silver Key