The jury of the 58th edition of the prestigious World Press Photo awards gave Kacper Kowalski the second prize in the long-term projects category for his series Toxic Beauty, consisting of images of industrial sites taken from the air. The purpose of the award-winning series is to show the physical consequences of human impact on the environment.
This project also plays with the concept/definition of what we consider beautiful and why this is happening – the artist explained in an interview for Press magazine in 2014.
Kacper Kowalski is a licensed paraglider pilot and instructor, a means of transport which he uses in his work to take pictures of the earth from the sky. The photographer devotes much time and effort to each of his projects, both artistic and intellectual.
As he writes about Toxic Beauty:
This is my contribution to the never-ending debate about what constitutes beauty. I took the photos for this project in chemical plants, quarries, in areas transformed by industry.
Kacper Kowalski, who was born in 1977, graduated in architecture from the Technical University of Gdańsk. He was the first Pole to fly more than 200km without propulsion. His photographs have frequently won awards in international competitions. This year’s award is his third success in the World Press Photo competition. The artist's debut album, Side Effects, was released in 2014.
Word Press Photo is the most important contest for press photographers, organised every year since 1995 by a foundation established especially for this purpose. More than 97,700 photos taken by almost 6,000 photographers from more than 130 countries were submitted to this year’s edition. The chair of the jury was Michele McNally, one of the managing editors of the New York Times. The awards were divided into eight categories, including the new category for long-term projects.
Source: www.worldpressphoto.org, www.press.pl, ed. DS, 12.02.2015, transl. Bozhana Nikolova