Series description
The state of Earth’s cryosphere is critical. Anthropogenic activities drive climate change and glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate. For the 2025 International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, an expedition set out to photograph an eclipse above the Leones Glacier in Chile, using drone-mounted aerial lights to visually link the Sun’s influence with the loss of glaciers. The Leones Glacier is retreating rapidly. As the glacier thins, unsupported valley walls collapse, covering the surface in dark debris that increases thermal absorption, accelerating melt and driving further instability.
Into The Crevasse
Patagonia is sparsely populated, but its dramatic peaks and glaciers have made it a prime destination for extreme outdoor sports, including mountaineering and ice climbing. Tourism now shapes many local economies. For some Indigenous communities, guiding and family run tourism have become an essential source of income.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, 2026 Sony World Photography Awards
Ring of Fire and Ice
Ice climbers summit the Leones Glacier as a 'Ring of Fire' type solar eclipse reaches annularity. As the eclipse winds lift snow into the air, drone-mounted lights illuminate the foreground, revealing rocky debris on the surface of the ice.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, 2026 Sony World Photography Awards
Standing on New Ground
At the terminus of the Leones Glacier, freshly exposed bedrock shows where the ice has retreated. The rocks, polished by millennia of glacial abrasion, are now uncovered by the relentless melting. The fractured blue face marks recent calving events, briefly revealing clean ice.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, 2026 Sony World Photography Awards
Wastelands
Aerial lights trace the glacier's surface level as it was in 2021, revealing how it has receded since then. In this location the photographer explains that 40 metres of thickness have been lost in four years, leaving a bare cliff face and a field of rubble. Three local ice guides sit on the side of the remaining ice, discussing the change in the landscape.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, 2026 Sony World Photography Awards
Where Ice Sleeps
Lines of light are drawn above the Leones Glacier with aerial lighting rigs, indicating the former height of the glacier. With reportedly up to half of global glacier volume projected to be lost by 2100, it is unknown what will remain if the Leones Glacier continues to decline at its current rate.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, 2026 Sony World Photography Awards
Wake of Destruction
A climber stands on the last band of clean, stable ice before the debris-covered zone. Travel beyond this point is hazardous. Unstable building-sized boulders litter the landscape, and deep crevasses can be hidden beneath rubble. As glaciers retreat and shrink, they turn familiar routes into unstable terrain that reshapes how people work and travel here.
© Liam Man, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Professional Competition, Landscape, 2026 Sony World Photography Awards