/ 2026 / Nature / Wildlife

• Prize
  Honorable Mention
• Photographer
  Marcello Garbagnati, Italy
• Date of Photograph
  8/7/2025

In primates, grooming is not only survival - it is social glue. What interested me was the unsettling familiarity of this scene: the patience, the concentration, the trust carried by touch. These gestures, ancient and instinctive, mirror our own need for closeness and reassurance. The image explores physical contact not as affection alone, but as a fundamental language of belonging.