by Ieva Gaile hadn’t expected to take a photo on her trip to the supermarket. The lawyer, who lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, worked from home that day and had come to lunch next door. When she discovered the faulty cabbage, which was placed on a high -towering stack of water locking pallets, her reaction was immediately.
“Since I started photography, I have developed the habit of always watching my surroundings for interesting pictures, and I thought it was visually beautiful,” says Gaile about this picture, in the object category at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025.
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It characterizes the cabbage as “lonely” in contrast to the uniformity of the bottles. “It seemed isolated and strange, but at the same time individually, in contrast to the army of identical bottles,” says Gaile.
When she later thought about the picture, other layers of meaning opened up for her. “Some may interpret social and ecological problems; how the irresponsible behavior of people and the careless approach to food emphasizes,” she says. “Environmentally conscious spectators may see the collision between nature and plastic. Others may look at him with humor: an absurd but familiar moment in our rushed everyday life.”
• The exhibition of the Sony World Photography Awards takes place in the Somerset House, London, from April 17th to May 5th
