Jonah Reenders Wins 2025 Booooooom Photo Awards Nature Category

Jonah Reenders has been named the winner of the Nature category in the 2025 Booooooom Photo Awards. The photographer's winning image was captured during his MFA thesis work titled 'Armillaria' in the Oakland Hills, using a medium format film camera with a strobe light after sunset. Reenders grew up on a blueberry farm, which fostered his connection to the natural world. His artistic development was influenced by Robert Frank's book 'The Americans' during high school and a seven-month research assistant position studying leatherback sea turtles and primates on Bioko Island off Africa's west coast. Currently a graduate fellow at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Reenders describes his work as exploring the relationship between humanity and nature, questioning human separation from natural systems. He is working on his first monograph and aims to continue working at the intersection of art and science. The photographer finds inspiration in Death Valley's desert environment, poetry by W.S. Merwin and Forrest Gander, and the work of Hieronymus Bosch. Reenders emphasizes photography as a means to ask questions about the world and values practical creation over excessive conceptual planning.