Civilisation: a breathtaking vista of life in the 21st century – in pictures

Red House I #13, 2005

Celebrated South Korean photographer Noh Suntag took this shot of dancers in identical yellow gowns performing at the Pyongyang stadium during an official press trip to North Korea.

Wild River, Florida, 2005

True wilderness is hard to come by in an era when planetary civilisation’s colonising powers reign supreme. Perhaps people instinctively recall our species’ thousands of years of struggle with the forces of nature, when we had only our pantheistic deities to protect us, and still crave a touch of the real thing. The ‘wild rivers’ of our amusement parks are places where people negotiate turbulent currents overlooked by towering mountain crags and primeval forests.

Welcome to Australia, 2004

This photograph is of the former Woomera detention centre in South Australia. In December 2004, Rosemary Laing obtained permission to photograph the site, which had become controversial for the treatment of detainees. The year before, as a result of intense public pressure, the Australian government had closed the centre. Laing says the image represents ‘a wedge through the landscape – a blockage, an eyesore, an echo of controversy and a closing off in terms of both a view and a sense of possibilities of Australian identity’.

Construction of Burj Khalifa Tower, Dubai, 2008

Philippe Chancel’s depiction of the construction of what is (perhaps only briefly) the tallest building in the world, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, cannot help but remind us of the work of industrious ants. Certain species of ants construct towers that, relatively speaking, would be comparable in size to some of the world’s tallest buildings.

Taloi Havini & Stuart Miller Sami and the Panguna mine, 2009

This series is dedicated to the ‘blood generation’ of young people born during the bitter and prolonged war between Papua New Guinea and the people of Bougainville (1988–98). Havini and Miller explore the repercussions of copper mining and armed conflict on the young people of the region and address the destruction of the natural environment that, for matrilineal societies of Bougainville and Buka, is foundational to their political and social organisation.

Untitled, 2014

Cyril Porchet has chosen not to title his astonishing crowd scene where brightly garbed human beings swarm like insects. The vibrant colours suggest we are witnessing a celebration, possibly a religious rite, while the swirling currents are evidence of shared excitement.

Torre Velasca, Milan, 2010, from the Invisible City series

Irene Kung’s series title is inspired by the book of the same name by author Italo Calvino. Like Calvino, Kung tempers reality with a fertile imagination. The buildings are real but the treatment is dreamlike, as if the structures exist on a planet far, far away.

Augustiner Chorherrenstift Sankt Florian III, 2014

The library of the Abbey Augustiner Chorherrenstift at St Florian, Austria, dating from the year 819, may seem like a strange choice for an exhibition on 21st civilisation. But this library reminds us that our current civilisation often values, incorporates and conserves the wisdom of the past. Each of the 150,000 volumes in this library, maintained for three centuries, can be considered a building block of our evolving planetary civilisation.

Aeroporto, 2012

In the 21st century, it is possible to be picked up on one continent and put down on another in a matter of hours. Two million people are in the air at any one time, in comfort and security, an airborne city the size of Brisbane or Perth. Cassio Vasconcellos treats the subject both literally (the components of his images are all of real life) and figuratively (the one-thousand plus components are stitched together to amplify the sense of civilisational complexity). Aeroporto is for the artist ‘a surreal portrait of globalisation, mobility and the speed of our way of life’.

Search in a house by anti-illegal immigration police, Tripoli, Libya, 2016

Samuel Gratacap has extensively tackled the complex topic of migration, encountering those who live and those who die trying to escape from life’s most dire circumstances. Power and powerlessness are the two stark poles of this picture, framed to centre the hapless man being interrogated. Clearly the gun will be the final arbiter of the exchange.

Brooks Brothers, WTC, New York, 12 Sep 2001

Of taking of this picture, Sean Hemmerle notes: ‘To be powerless in the face of adversity is an unsettling and humbling experience.’ The photographer’s framing of the image underlines the strangeness of his experience: he finds himself alone in the still confines of a clothing shop, most of the shirts still neatly stacked on their shelves, a chair and table in perfect condition. Outside, framed by the blown-out window, we encounter a scene of chaos and ruin.

Untitled from the Models II series, 2006

The Models II series comprises 12 photographs of young models – six boys and six girls – chosen from catalogues proposed by various modelling agencies. What emerges from this series is a particular aesthetic, which brings to mind the avatars used to represent humans in virtual worlds.

The Compact Muon Solenoid cavern part of the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva

The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest machine humans have built. Yet it was built to study the tiniest of things – subatomic particles.

Iraq, 2008

In a spectacle designed to boost morale, more than a thousand US soldiers, airmen, marines and seamen pray before a massive re-enlistment ceremony in Al-Faw Palace in Baghdad on 4 July.

Bobby and Kevin, Waiting to Adopt 2012

A couple awaits the arrival of a new human being. The expectant parents pose in the child’s room, and the environment they have created speaks to their hopes and aspirations.

FIFA | Executive Committee Zurich 2013

The Fifa executive committee meets at an underground floor at the home of Fifa in Zürich, in a bunker-like room worthy of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.

Migrants are escorted by Slovenian riot police to the registration camp outside Dobova in 2015.

The Persian Court at the Ibn Battuta Mall, Dubai, 2016

Dubai is the ultimate playground of globalisation and capitalism, while raising questions about authenticity and sustainability. With its grand shopping malls, artificial islands and massive skyscrapers, the little emirate on the Persian Gulf may prove to be a future model city or a short-lived playground for the fortunate.

Crowds in Warsaw in Poland watch the funeral of Pope John Paul II, broadcast live from the Vatican on large video screens. By amplifying the importance of the monitors, the photographer highlights the power of media in our lives – dominating, controlling, overpowering.

Supertree Grove, Gardens by the Bay, Singapore, 2012