Dancing bears a natural choice for photo accolade
The collection of 40 pictures, many of which will be on sale as part of Christie's first "green auction" in New York to mark Earth Day today, cover more than 100 years of photography.
They include underwater images of water lilies, sea lions, a thresher shark caught in a fishing net and a polar bear swimming submerged with its image reflected in the icy water.
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Hide AdThere are also black-and-white images of landscapes and wildlife, an image of the Earth viewed from space over the horizon of the moon and a picture of a chimpanzee reaching out its hand to famed conservationist Jane Goodall.
The images include shots by landscape artist Ansel Adams, National Geographic magazine editor-in-chief Chris Johns, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Jack Dykinga and underwater specialist Brian Skerry.