Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Photojournalism
Audio description
Transcript
This is ‘Dusting for New Evidence’ by Britta Jaschinski from Germany and the UK. This photograph was taken in Heathrow airport, London, England, UK and is the 2024 category winner of ‘Photojournalism’. In the middle of the main image there is this giant curved tusk. It looks like a full tusk, and it's broken off where it would join to an elephant. You can see some black fingerprints in the middle of the tusk. These prints are being dusted by a forensic scientist. The scientist is wearing something that looks like a blue boiler suit or hospital scrubs. One of those medical blue overalls. They're also wearing blue latex gloves and a standard light blue face mask. You can't see much of the scientist. You can only see their forehead and the upper part of their nose because they're leaning over and looking at the prints as they dust them. The tusk is shaped like a semicircle, a bit like a cartoon smile. It looks to be very polished. It is reflecting a lot of light that is coming from a light above the tusk. The tusk looks like beech wood that has been freshly polished. It is a light brown, almost going on to an ashy yellow colour. Another thing you're quickly drawn to is the background of the image where there is a rail of animal fur coats. You have got one coat made of light brown snakeskin. This coat is next to a leopard print coat and a lot of dark chocolate brown fur coats. There are lots of different animal skins, perhaps a leopard, tiger snake. The elephant tusk is resting on what seems to be an old dark brown wooden box. It's very worn and used. The tusk is sitting on a shelf within the box. It doesn't all fit inside and either side of the ivory curves up and over the edge of the box. The tusk stretches from the left to the right of the photo. The tip is especially smooth and polished. It looks like when an eraser at the end of a pencil is very smooth and rounded, the rounded edge of the tusk is a slightly darker colour. It looks more weathered than the rest. The person who's examining the tusk is using a black brush that has a lot of bristles at the end. This is used to reveal the fingerprints on the tusk. I've counted almost twenty fingerprints that are a different shade of an ashy black dark grey colour. So, this tusk has definitely been handled by a lot of people before it was examined by this person. A lot of emotion is brought to the surface when looking at this image. Ivory is always a difficult thing to look at, and this is a very large piece of ivory that's been confiscated and being examined. Seeing the rack of coats in the background as well, combined, that's an image signifying a lot of death and the illegal wildlife trade. Initially, I think that there's nothing happy about this image, but the work of the scientist brings hope, hope that those who have committed these crimes can be caught.