Glass from Stone

Photographer

Marcel van Beek

Category

Fine Art Photography - Kinetic

Company

Submission Group

Professional

Year

2026

Country / Region:

Germany

Glass from Stone observes water at the instant it emerges from a source stone and briefly assumes forms that appear almost solid. Released into motion, the water folds, swells and collides with itself. For fractions of a second, an element defined by fluidity becomes a succession of distinct bodies: transparent cavities, crystalline protrusions and fleeting formations that may suggest creatures, organs or fragments of sculpture. The title describes the central paradox of the series. Stone evokes permanence, density and duration; from it emerges something transparent, mutable and impossible to retain. Under light, the moving water takes on the appearance of molten or sculpted glass. Refraction concentrates surrounding colours into flashes of gold, blue and white, while curved liquid surfaces behave as lenses, repeatedly reconstructing the space around them. Photography introduces a second transformation. Continuous flow is interrupted by the exposure and divided into singular configurations that the eye could never examine in real time. Forms that existed only for an instant become apparently stable objects. The three photographs trace a progression from material emergence towards increasing estrangement. Glass Eruption retains the energy of water breaking into form. Liquid Relic isolates a more compact, object-like body, as though movement had momentarily left behind an artefact. In Source Phantom, tonal inversion reverses familiar relations of light, transparency and colour, transforming the same physical phenomenon into something spectral. These figurative associations remain deliberately unresolved. Nothing has been sculpted or constructed: the forms arise from water itself and disappear immediately. Glass from Stone uses photography’s capacity to arrest time to reveal a hidden morphology of flow — temporary bodies created once, seen only through the camera, and abandoned by the water in the following instant.

More Gold Winners
Amateur
2026

Photographer

Patrick Haleyt

Category

Nature Photography - Wildlife

Country / Region

Belgium

Professional
2026

Photographer

Noel McIntyre

Category

Black & White Photography - Photojournalism

Country / Region

Ireland

Student
2026

Photographer

Gardenia Zhang

Category

Special Category - Travel Photography

Country / Region

United States

Professional
2026

Photographer

Elle Leontiev

Category

International Photography - Vanuatu

Country / Region

Australia