“These women are not defined by the waste around them, but by their ability to find dignity, purpose, and value where the rest of the world sees only abandonment.”

—Claudia Revidat, French photographer and film director

In her first-place project, Revidat documents the outskirts of Delhi, where the open-air landfill Ghazipur rises more than 330 feet into the sky. Among mountains of plastic waste lie the forgotten remnants of our global consumption: countless discarded garments and textile fibers. Here, women work amid suffocating heat, toxic fumes, and fires fueled by methane trapped beneath the waste, sorting through heaps of discarded materials in search of plastic, textiles, and anything else that can be salvaged.

Their labor keeps valuable materials in circulation, but it unfolds within a system that comes at an enormous environmental and human cost. Toxic leachate seeps into the soil and groundwater, methane fires send hazardous smoke into the atmosphere, and fine particles compromise the air breathed by nearby communities. The women who recover what others have thrown away are left to face the consequences of a culture of consumption they work against each day.

Rather than offering Ghazipur as an example of regeneration, this project confronts the very conditions that make it necessary. Revidat asks us to consider what happens to the materials we discard and the people who live among them, revealing the lasting consequences of an economy built around producing, consuming, and throwing away. After reflection comes a deeper understanding of regeneration—one that includes restoring landscapes, protecting communities, and recognizing the invisible labor of those who extend the life of what we choose to throw away. 

“This story changed the way I understood regeneration. I came to see it not as a single environmental intervention, but as the rebuilding of relationships between people, materials, place, and economic life.”

—Elena Siretanu, Moldovan-born visual storyteller and documentary photographer

The Threads That Hold the Mountains by Elena Siretanu is a photographic project that follows the women of Kullvi Whims. What began with a single sewing machine and a small group of women in the Himalayan village of Naggar has now become a community-rooted social enterprise, with a wide network of artisans handling the washing, drying, spinning, dyeing, knitting, weaving and sewing of wool. Women from the surrounding community can now earn their own income, strengthen their independence, and give renewed economic relevance to skills long practiced within their homes and families.

For this project, Siretanu spent several days with the women, observing and photographing the material journey from raw Himalayan wool to finished textile. The images, she says, follow the patient tactile stages of production: handling and preparing the fiber, spinning it into yarn, creating color from plants, working at the loom, knitting, sewing, and sharing knowledge across generations. 

Regeneration, in this story, is not a single technique or a finished result. Rather, it is the gradual repair of relationships—between fiber and landscape, craft and livelihood, inherited knowledge and contemporary markets. The women leading this work are rebuilding a local textile chain around materials and skills that already belong to the region. As a result, they are not presented simply as beneficiaries of an initiative, but as skilled producers whose largely unseen knowledge is recognized as expertise.

“I hope my work encourages viewers to pause, connect with the subject, and appreciate the stories held within ordinary and extraordinary moments.”

—Wasim Malik, Ladakhi photographer and filmmaker 

In Changthang, Ladakh, runner-up Wasim Malik displays the lives of the Changpa, a nomadic pastoral community living on the high-altitude Himalayan plateau. The photographs follow the rhythms of herding, from guiding flocks across snow-covered grasslands to tending newborn goats and gathering livestock at the end of the day. The Changpa maintain a longstanding relationship with the land and the animals that sustain their livelihoods.

This project reveals regeneration at its source: the landscapes and living beings our textiles and clothes often come from. By witnessing the community’s traditional textile practices, we can trace the journey of materials such as pashmina from the fine undercoat of Changthangi goats to the handmade fabrics produced through generations of knowledge and craftsmanship. Images of women weaving on handlooms, hands preparing raw wool, and the tools used to process the fiber show the labor and care behind these traditions. Together, the photographs offer a glimpse into a way of life sustained by seasonal migration, close ties to livestock, and cultural practices passed down over time.