Heirs of
the earth

With the next generation of teens entering adulthood on a warming earth, how can they keep their cool and connect to this world in flux? A world shaped by increasingly extreme conditions? How to respond to a landscape evolving underfoot, while at the same time having to navigate the unknown terrain of their own tomorrow?

Exploring these issues, award-winning French photographer Raphaël Neal juxtaposes natural landscapes and scenes of climate change with portraits of individual teens. The images invite the viewer to draw their own parallels. You feel empathy for both as these young people and this ancient planet together highlight a combined sense of fragile strength. Of promise. Different outcomes. Hope and despair paired.

“Beauty and danger were the two words I kept in mind while producing the  series. It had to look both engaging and uncomfortable, staged and wild at the same time, like an echo to the confusion one experiences with the dangerously nice and warm weather,” Nael explains. Each image reveals a different type of behaviour in the face of an uncertain future. See a selection of the photographer’s New Waves series below.