Jack Karnaghan, I guess this is home now (SINGLE SHOT 2026)

Decorated in red... horns painted... it stands at the edge of a concrete forecourt on the road to 九寨沟 (JiuZhaiGou National Park) – positioned, like everything else at this particular pit stop – the aunties toasting chestnuts, the merchants selling overpriced tangerines – for the benefit of some tourists who will be gone in fifteen minutes. Beyond the petroleum streaks in the puddles and buses spluttering at the kerb – the valley opens improbably wide just beyond the railing, the kind of landscape that makes you understand why people built religions out here. At some point, it turned its back on all of us. I was somewhere in the middle of a long trip through China – the kind an Asian Australian takes when they're not quite sure what they're looking for but feel the pull of it anyway. This yak, white-furred, ceremonially dressed and tethered to a railing at a tourist rest stop, was doing something I understood instinctively. An uncomfortable familiarity. Gazing at a valley it was biologically built for and physically barred from entering, by a rope attached to a septum ring no less. A grand animal reduced to backdrop, nature on display for the very people who paved over its path. There's a particular grief in being bound to a place by blood while remaining, in every practical sense, a visitor to it. For the yak, at least – I guess this is home now.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.