Like the vast majority of the photographs submitted, this is a beautifully composed picture, showing excellent visual flair. However, what gave it the edge over a number of very good pictures was the way it also engaged with its subject matter. At the centre of the picture is Wolfgang Mattheuer's Jahrhundertschritt . This sculpture was controversially adopted by the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig to symbolize the equally destructive effects of the Third Reich and the GDR on Germany, an historical continuum from which, the museum suggests, the Chancellor of Unification, Helmut Kohl, finally liberated the nation in 1990. The inclusion in the bottom corner of the picture of the two toddlers wonderfully seems both to confirm and question this reading of history. On the one hand, the children's presence might imply that the German nation has put this period of history behind it, the boy's baseball cap marking his membership of the western democratic world. However, on the other, his obvious bemusement by the sculpture, as he grips on to the figure's outstretched toe, might be read symbolically, suggesting that, even if the nation has moved on, its past can still provoke questions.
This a worthy winner. Well done Phil.