3rd Place, "High Water" by Andrew Quilty

It was 2009 when Au Bala, or High Water, the highest village in the Foladi Valley in central Afghanistan's Bamyan Province, first encountered skiing. A man and woman working for an international development organisation had travelled there in a quest to map the mountains as part of an effort to attract tourists to the province. The pair gave a demonstration on skis they’d brought along, and ever since, based on the shared memory of that day and using lengths of timber with plastic strips nailed to the bottom, with nylon webbing, twine or even protruding nails for bindings, the boys of Au Bala have continued to build their own.