1st Place, Amelie Labourdette, France

Amélie Labourdette interrogates the invisible landscape, the blurred zone of concern located below the visible landscape. The ‘Empire of Dust’ series of photographs was taken in the south of Italy, where financial crises and embezzlement have created an architectural aesthetic of incompleteness. Using an “archaeology of the present” she both reflects contemporary history by the yardstick of these unfinished architectures, and involves the viewer’s imagination so that a new view of the world unfolds. In front of these images, we become archaeologists of our time, able to look back at our present and see our future too.