London Bridge is Down (On the Emotional Life of Nations)

• Prize
  Silver in Press/General News
• Photographer
  Antonio Denti, Italy

The Queen is dead. The Royal sailors, not the elite corps, escort the coffin. The ancient ritual, so out of time, is surprisingly powerful. Like all rituals, made so that the people can see. See that the world stood the shock and is ready to enter the unknown smoothly, peacefully. Everything flows around the ritual: the procession, the mighty army, the endless queue. People seem hungry for meaning and stability. Only behind their many eyes, as if peeking through somebody's windows, one can catch a hint of it: history's frightening turmoil, the cold wind of unstoppable change.