THESE pictures, all shortlisted for the Sony World Images Awards 2024, strike on the coronary heart of human vulnerability and the fragility of nature.

Eddo Hartmann is a finalist within the Panorama class for his sequence The Sacrifice Zone, referring to a distant a part of Kazakhstan that was the most important testing floor for the Soviet Union’s nuclear experiments from 1949 to 1989.

The picture above exhibits a dosimetrist measuring radiation ranges at Kazakhstan’s Lake Shagan. This space stays extremely contaminated from the 450 or so nuclear checks carried on the market. The principle image (high) exhibits what stays of an statement tower at Opytnoe Pole in Russia, one other space used for Soviet nuclear checks.

Hartmann used infrared to seize these landscapes, with the purple hues evoking radiation contamination, which might’t be seen by the bare eye. “Native scientists utilise infrared expertise to watch the present situations of contaminated websites,” he says. “The chlorophyll current in inexperienced vegetation displays a considerable quantity of infrared mild. The varied shades of reflection present precious insights into the general well being of the setting within the specified space.”

Elsewhere, a woman climbs onto an outdated oil tank within the Albanian village of Zharrëz (pictured above). This picture, taken by Jonas Kakó, is shortlisted within the Surroundings class. Pictured beneath, Wildlife & Nature finalist Jasper Doest captured elephants charging by way of Livingstone, Zambia.

The winner of the competitors shall be revealed on 18 April, earlier than an exhibition at Somerset Home, London, from 19 April to six Could.