Michael Marsh's picture of the Brighton Palace Pier is an evocative and poignant winner of the Historic Photographer of the Year 2020: Union flags fly in the breeze above the once-glorious Victorian construction battered by a turbulent sea and showing the ravages of time and tide, an allegory for 2020
History in the frame for worldwide photography competition
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Overall winner: Mchael Marsh - The Brighton Palace Pier. Photo / Supplied
Awards judge Dan Snow said, "Historic Photographer of the Year shines a light on the fascinating beauty of the world's historical sites. These cultural monuments stand as testament to the incredible stories that took place all around us. The call for photographers to comb through their archives saw everything from abandoned urban landscapes and utterly transporting shots of the world's greatest cultural locations to Arthurian captures of historical wonders cloaked in other-worldly mists."

The Historic England category was won by Adam Burton with an aerial view of St Michael's Church in Somerset, surrounded in early-morning mist, while a new category, Where History Happened, was scooped by Martin Chamberlain with a sombre shot of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria.

Commenting on the overall winning entry, Dan Korn from Sky History said: "This submission was genuinely outstanding and truly captured the faded splendour of the pier, and the rusting catafalque beneath. The beautiful framing, turbulent seas and storm clouds gathering made for an entry that was a well-deserved overall winner in an absolutely wonderful range of entries this year."







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