This year’s photo competition has included a wonderful array of archaeological images from around the world. Despite travel limitations over the last year, we’ve been transported to a wide variety of places, with photos ranging from lesser-known monuments and archaeological remains to iconic UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and from rainy lakes to sunny islands and deserts, demonstrating that evidence of the past can really be found everywhere. The competition was judged by archaeological photographer Adam Stanford, of SUMO Aerial-Cam, who cast his expert eye over the entries, and presented the winners in a video during the Current Archaeology online conference and awards ceremony.
This year’s overall winner is Vitalii Popkov’s photo of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesos in Ukraine, featured in ‘Horizon’. Adam commented on his choice for CWA Photo of the Year 2021, ‘This amazing picture is… a picture within a picture, looking through a window here to another building. But really what makes this special is the fact that you’ve got three pigeons just exploding away from the top of the pillar there.’
The three runners-up are presented here in alphabetical order.
First is Bill di Paolo’s photo showing light and shadows falling across a hieroglyph-covered wall and a decorated column in the Temple of Edfu, an ancient Egyptian site on the west bank of the Nile in southern Egypt. Adam described it as ‘a lovely picture of some hieroglyphs, lit up beautifully.’
Helen McLain’s photo depicting a picturesque morning in Bagan, Myanmar, was another of the photos selected by Adam. He said that the picture of the UNESCO World Heritage Site was ‘a shot worthy of a James Bond set, with those extraordinary structures and those hot air balloons early in the morning.’
The final runner-up is Yuri Pritisk’s photo of paintings in a 19th-century church in the village of Nizhnyaya Elshanka, Russia. Our judge remarked, ‘This is [another] beautiful picture within a picture where we can see the painting… visible on the wall… a really lovely picture.’
Well done to the winners, and thank you to all who entered; we’ve loved seeing your work.
Keep an eye out for details about the CWA Photo of the Year 2022 competition in a forthcoming issue of the magazine. We look forward to seeing your entries!
Find out more about the overall winner in Horizon.
