Terra Nullius is the Latin phrase for "nobody's land." It's a colonial construct that has been used to describe land that's seen as "unclaimed" or "uncivilized" - land that was forcibly taken from its Indigenous inhabitants, including in Canada.
Giovanni Capriotti and his friend Matteo Landra at the Sony World Photography Awards gala
Terra Nullius is also the name of an award-winning photography project by University of Guelph-Humber (U of GH) Media & Communication Studies instructor Giovanni Capriotti. He gathered archives, created images, and made collages with photos he collected. This project won him a second-place Sony World Photography Award in the Perspectives category in April 2025. He flew to London, England to attend the gala where he received the honour, as well as went to the special exhibition's opening where his work was displayed, which he called "a great experience."
"I don't do it for the awards," Capriotti said of his photojournalism. "If we only got out of the house to shoot [photos] for awards, it would deceive the purpose of what we do," he explained.
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