Winners
Portable Traffic Light asset: Transportation Research Center Inc. (TRC Inc.) Atwater, California © Lisa Barnard

Lisa Barnard

In her prizewinning project proposal, Lisa Barnard takes Thomas Nagel’s influential essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat? as her starting point to explore the question of how technology shapes human perception and affects our relationship to the environment. Drawing on a wide array of image-making processes, she presents her expansive artistic research into the topic of echolocation, which reveals unexpected connections between animal consciousness, driverless vehicle technologies, lithium mining, and nuclear test sites.

© Sarah Weal

Isadora Romero

Isadora Romero uses three case studies in Ecuador for her prizewinning research into the cohabitation of humans and forests in the past, present, and future. She questions the colonial view of tropical rainforests, combining classical documentary photography, organic materials, and experimental development processes as an example of a thriving relationship between the environment and its inhabitants. Her collaborations with scientists and local communities create a nuanced narrative about the forest’s spiritual, political, and ecological dimensions.

© Ana María Buitrón
Palms at Mache Chindul © Isadora Romero & Ailín Blasco
Jury
© C/O Berlin Foundation . David von Becker
The Jury

The jury was comprised of Tomáš Dvořák (Associate professor of photography at FAMU in Prague), Zippora Elders (Freelance curator), Boaz Levin (Curator and co-head of program, C/O Berlin), Hinde Haest (Curator, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), Michelle Henning (Professor of photography and media, University of Liverpool), Maria-Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou (Research associate, Vrije University Amsterdam), Christiane Riedel (Board member, Crespo Foundation), and Katharina Täschner (Junior curator, C/O Berlin). The decision was reached unanimously following nominations made by twelve international experts.

About the Prize
A New View of Nature

Many ideas about nature have become unsettled as people realize that life and economics under global capitalism have irrevocably changed the global ecosystem. The effects of the climate crisis show that nature in the twenty-first century is no longer “natural,” but is instead affected in every way by human actions. How do we view nature today, when its condition is indivisibly interwoven in the social and political expressions of our way of life?

Together with Crespo Foundation, C/O Berlin awards the After Nature . Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize from 2024. Named after the founder and photographer Ulrike Crespo (1950–2019), the prize honors international artists using photography and lens-based media to respond to the changing ecologies of today.

A joint project with