The winners of the 2018 National Geographic Photo Contest were announced yesterday. Three categories were honored: wildlife, people and places. Among the winners from these categories a photo took home the grand prize of this famous magazine’s contest.
With his photo of the Volkswagen boneyard photographer Jassen Todorov, was able to snatch the top spot among the thousands of entries of the prestigious competition.
“Thousands of Volkswagen and Audi cars sit idle in the middle of California’s Mojave Desert. Models manufactured from 2009 to 2015 were designed to cheat emissions tests mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Following the scandal, Volkswagen recalled millions of cars. By capturing scenes like this one, I hope we will all become more conscious of and more caring toward our beautiful planet” says the photo caption.
Surely, this location, located near Victorville, California, is one of Volkswagen’s 37 locations across the United States where they store their cars. Some of these are a bit out of the ordinary, like an old paper mill in Minnesota, a former football stadium in Detroit and the now-famous 134-acre lot in the Mojave Desert, which can hold 21,000 cars of the 294,000 the German manufacturer has to store in the US.
If you want to see this distressing scene in all its sadness, you can head to Google Maps directly. You can also check all the 2018 National Geographic Photo Contest winners directly on the contest’s website at: natgeo.com/photocontest.
