Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

Shoppers walk down stairs featuring a five-metre-high reproduction of Vincent van Gogh's signature painting “Sunflowers”, at the entrance to Ocean Terminal in Hong Kong July 15, 2013. A premium three-dimensional reproduction of works of Van Gogh, the RELIEVO collection, approved by the curators of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, is on display at a gallery inside Harbour City shopping mall attached to the terminal. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

A fisherman boats in Chao Lake where thick cyanobacteria gather on the surface on August 5, 2015 in Chaohu, Anhui Province of China. As high temperature came in summar, part of water in Anhui Province's Chao Lake breeds large tracts of cyanobacteria which not only brought pollution to sense of smell, but also affected people's life. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)

“Do-Ho Suh addresses issues of identity, memory, and relationships. Son of the famous Korean ink-painter Suh Se-Ok, Do-Ho Suh is a leading figure in the transnational avant-garde generation of Korean artists who came of age in the late 1990s, and his work eloquently represents a dual consciousness between East and West”.

Photo: “Karma” by Do-Ho Suh. Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA. (Photo by Alan Teo)

People will spout about impermanence of digital records, but books are really fragile, too. Alexis Arnold from San Francisco wanted to illustrate that with her project The Crystallized Book: collecting books and growing Borax crystals on them. Books range from literature classics to magazines, and there’s even a mysterious and arcane tome called “Linux: The Complete Manual”.

Construction workers take a lunch break on a steel beam atop the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, New York, September 29, 1932. In the background is the Chrysler Building. (Photo by AP Photo)

Video bloggers stream live broadcast of an event to celebrate the fourth birthday of the world's only giant panda triplets, Meng Meng, Shuai Shuai and Ku Ku, at Chimelong Safari Park in Guangzhou, China July 29, 2018. (Photo by Bobby Yip/Reuters)

A man in a wartime uniform, poses for a photo on an abandoned tank at a beach, ahead of the 60th anniversary of Second Taiwan Straits Crisis against China, in Kinmen, Taiwan on August 19, 2018. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)