The World Wide Panorama

Introduction

The World Wide Panorama event of the third quarter of 2024 is a collection of panoramas with the common theme of “Future”.

Theme Essay: Future

The essay conveys the team’s idea of the event. It is usually published together with the Theme announcement and offers a starting point for the contributing photographers.

Essay by Erik Krause and Carsten Rees

Who knows the future? Nobody does. A once popular Italian-English song said "Que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be, the future is not ours to see". But the future is coming anyway, we can't stop it, be it good or bad. Is the future determined? Yes and no. We rely on things to be permanent. The road I travelled today will probably be there tomorrow. But it's not certain, tomorrow there could be a building site, a sinkhole or whatever. A German poet during the time of the 30 Years War put it that way:

Du siehst, wohin du siehst, nur Eitelkeit auf Erden.
Was dieser heute baut, reißt jener morgen ein;
Wo jetzund Städte stehn, wird eine Wiese sein,
Auf der ein Schäferskind wird spielen mit den Herden;

Wherever you look, you see only vanity on earth.
What one builds today, another tears down tomorrow;
Where cities now stand, there will be a meadow,
On which a shepherd's child will play with the flocks;

So what do you shoot for such a subject? Well, there are trends, things that are called "futuristic" or "this is the future of..." For example, of public transport, of mobility or travel, of architecture or cities, of living, working or leisure. The future can be utopian or dystopian, as in countless video games, science fiction films or youth culture. Punk coined the slogan "No Future", which wasn't originally dystopian, but soon took on that meaning, influenced by the Cold War, pessimism and despair. But the future is built on the past, and when we look at what we have achieved, there is little reason for despair. Life expectancy is higher than ever, we have conquered most of the killer diseases, and the number of people on earth living in extreme poverty has fallen from 2 billion in 1990 to less than 0.75 billion to future day. But still not only life expectancy and education do heavily rely on the socio-economic status of your family, your neighbourhood, the continent you live on, …