Shortlist, Artifacts Beyond the Whiteout by Marvin Maralit

Hokkaido is often depicted as the land of ice and snow, and is commonly photographed in black & white. Heading to the region, I expected to do the same. As I travelled across its harsh, snowy landscape, I came across fields as white as a blank canvas. There, I forced myself to see beyond the obvious: beyond just black & white, beyond the chills and blizzards, and beyond my imagination. I saw it as a perfect opportunity to explore my ideas of a calm but harsh landscape; of what it could look like amidst the blizzard and the cold. I exposed the images for five minutes or more to maintain a sense of minimalism and to reduce any distracting elements such as ripples and movement in the sky.