For the first time in the 67-year history of the competition, there is no person in the winning photo. The strength of this winning image lies in the lack of human beings, whereby only memorial images make the memory of history visible.

Amber Bracken's photo commemorates the children who died at Kamloops Indian Residential School in Canada. Until its closure in 1969, the purpose of the institution was to force children to renounce their own culture and customs. The institution thus attempted to impose an institutional form of 'normal' on young generations. Many children died during this process. Bracken's photo was taken in response to the discovery of no fewer than 215 unmarked graves in Kamloops, British Columbia.

Judge Rena Effendi said about the photo: “This is a quiet moment of global reckoning for the history of colonization. Not just in Canada, but all over the world.”