📍 Jigokudani Monkey Park, Japan Silver, 2026 Australian Photographic Prize In the mountains of Nagano, winter arrives with intention. The snow accumulates on the cedar and pine above the valley, and the Japanese macaques descend to the thermal springs as they have for generations because the water is exactly 40 degrees and the air is not. Grooming is not comfort for its own sake among macaques. It is currency, alliance, the language of who belongs to whom. But something happens in the hot spring that makes all of that secondary. The steam rises. The cold is held at bay. And occasionally one animal will work its fingers through the fur of another with such unhurried attention that the distinction between duty and tenderness becomes impossible to locate. The one being groomed has its eyes closed. Its whole face has gone somewhere private. The younger one works on, focused, steady, asking nothing in return.
