The World Photography Organisation announced the overall winners of the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards 2023during a gala ceremony held in London and presented by the popularizer and art historian Kate Bryan.
Who are the winners of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
The title of Photographer of the Year went to the famous Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins for the series Our War. The work is not only a portrait of post civil war Libya, but above all a tribute to Anton Hammerla photojournalist assassinated during the 2011 Libyan civil war and one of his closest friends.
The work was born from a sense of frustration of Martins and his impotence in finding the remains of his friend. Therefore, having decided to leave for Libya, the photographer secretly enters the country with the help of an oil smuggler.
How the work Our War was born
Faced with a situation made up not only of war, but of suffering and poverty, Martins asked himself a question: “How do you tell a story without witnesses, traces, evidence or protagonists?”
Hence Our War was born, where the photographer takes several photographic portraits of people with whom Hammerl had come into contact or who had participated in the conflict.
“It is an immense honor to receive this recognition,” he commented Martins, who continues, “Although I usually have a rather detached approach to awards and am aware of the subjective nature of personal choices, knowing that this year’s Professional competition received over 180,000 entries puts everything back into perspective. In this particular case, it was very emotional to be able to pay tribute to a friend on an international stage and bring to the public’s attention the family’s struggle to find his remains. No other award has the same reach as the Sony World Photography Awards.”
The words of Mike Trow
Mike Trow, President of the judging panel of the Professional 2023 competition, stated that: “Photography often speaks of memories and their nature. Long-term memory consciously stores past events, associating them with our reworking and interpretation – through direct experience or mediation by the innumerable means of communication we use.
In Our War, Edgar Martins has used memory and inventiveness to show us a personal series of high-impact portraits, which seeks to reconstruct the last days of a close friend, the photojournalist Anton Hammerl. His work shows how far a photographer can go to tell a story and create meaning.
Every single image conveys the sense of the journey made by Anton, without explicitly saying how his life ended. This year’s jury unanimously appreciated the shots and their narrative force”.
The winners of the Professional categories of the 2023 Sony World Photography Awards
The winners of the Professional competition were identified by a jury of experts on the basis of a corpus of works of 5-10 images dedicated to the most varied subjects. The best were awarded a set of digital photographic equipment from Sony.
Let’s find out this year’s winners:
ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN
WINNER: Fan Li (Mainland China) for the Cement Factory Series
Finalists: 2nd place Servaas Van Belle (Belgium); 3rd place Andres Gallardo Albajar (Spain)
CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY
WINNER: Lee-Ann Olwage (South Africa) for the series The Right to Play
Finalists: 2nd place Noemi Comi (Italy); 3rd place Edoardo Delille and Giulia Piermartiri (Italy)
DOCUMENTARY
WINNER: Hugh Kinsella Cunningham (UK) for The Women’s Peace Movement series in
Congo
Finalists: 2nd place Mohammed Salem (Palestine); 3rd place Tariq Zaidi (UK)
ENVIRONMENT
WINNER: Marisol Mendez (Bolivia) and Federico Kaplan (Argentina) for the Miruku series
Finalists: 2nd place Jonas Kakó (Germany); 3rd place Axel Javier Sulzbacher (Germany)
LANDSCAPE
WINNER: Kacper Kowalski (Poland) for the Event Horizon series
Finalists: 2nd place Bruno Zanzottera (Italy); 3rd place Fabio Bucciarelli (Italy)
More winners
PORTFOLIO
WINNER: James Deavin (UK) for Portfolio
Finalists: 2nd place Marylise Vigneau (France); 3rd place Marjolein Martinot (Netherlands)
PORTRAIT
WINNER: Edgar Martins (Portugal) for the Our War series
Finalists: 2nd place Ebrahim Noroozi (Islamic Republic of Iran); 3rd place Jean-Claude Moschetti (France)
SPORT
WINNER: Al Bello (USA) for Female Pro Baseball Player Succeeds Series in All Male Pro League
Finalists: 2nd place Andrea Fantini (Italy); 3rd place Nicola Zolin (Italy)
STILL LIFE
WINNER: Kechun Zhang (Mainland China) for The Sky Garden series
Finalists: 2nd place Carloman Macidiano Lawns Riojas (Peru); 3rd place Jagoda Malanin (Poland)
NATURE AND WILDLIFE
WINNER: Corey Arnold (USA) for the series Cities Gone Wild
Finalists: 2nd place Adalbert Mojrzisch (Germany); 3rd place Sriram Mural (India)
Open Photographer of the Year
The winner of this category is Dinorah Graue Obscura (Mexico), winning a cash prize of $5,000, a set of digital photographic equipment from Sony, and great international exposure.
The shot that allowed her to win is called Mighty Pairmade for the Nature Photography category.
The black-and-white image depicts a pair of crested caracaras from southern Texas, perched on a branch, looking straight in the same direction, almost as if they sensed they were posing for the camera.
“It is a tremendous honor to receive the Open Photographer of the Year 2023 award. I am absolutely sure it will help raise awareness of my work as a nature photographer, which allows me to convey and share with others the beauty I see in nature. I am convinced that photography is a very powerful medium, useful for making the general public aware of the fragility of the natural world” said Graue Obscura.
Student Photographer of the Year
The winner of the Student Photographer of the Year title is Long Jing (Mainland China) of the Yunnan Arts Universitywho has been awarded a set of digital photographic equipment by Sony worth €30,000 for his university.
The award-winning series Keep the Yunnan Opera, lets us directly discover the behind the scenes of the Yunnan opera house, showing an increasingly small number of performers on stage and spectators. The performances totally reflect the multicultural soul of the southern part of China.
Jing said: “A picture is worth a thousand words and my goal has always been to infuse warmth into the shots, reveal the stories they contain. Being named Student Photographer of the Year 2023 has given me more confidence in myself and in the fact that in the future I will be able to create even more exciting and engaging work”.
Youth Photographer of the Year
Selected from a shortlist of 7 photographers under the age of 19, Hai Wang (Mainland China, 17 years old) is the winner of the Youth Photographer of the Year category, a title that allowed him, above all, to win a Sony digital kit and global fame.
The winning photograph shows endless rows of empty colored chairs, prepared for a school ceremony canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I appreciate the attention and support that audiences around the world give to teen photographers. As a representative of the category, I can say that our goal is to try to change the world in an alternative way and not waste a single second of our lives,” Wang commented.
The Sustainability Prize of the Sony World Photography Awards 2023 goes to an Italian
On the podium of the winners we also find an Italian: Alessandro Cinque, the first ever winner of the Sustainability Prize, which provides for a cash prize of 5,000 dollars and the exhibition of the project at the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition in London.
This new recognition is very important, as it is dedicated to the stories, people and organizations that daily pursue one of the Sustainable Development Goals identified by the UN.
Five won with the series Atrapanieblas (Fog Nets), which documents the innovative solution that was adopted in Lima, the capital of Peru, to deal with the constant water shortage. The “cloud catchers” nets, in fact, serve to retain the micro-particles of humidity suspended in the air, thus allowing about 200 liters of water to be collected per day to be distributed to the inhabitants.
Cinque stated that: “I am very proud and happy to have won this award. I like to think that, through my photography and thanks to the resonance of this competition, I am giving a voice to those who have to deal with the lack of water every day.
A problem that, according to the United Nations, afflicts over 40% of the world’s population. It is important to publicize the efforts made in Lima to fight against this shortage, in the hope that these stories will stir consciences and, finally, we will understand the importance of tackling climate change together and creating a more just world for all”.
Outstanding Contribution to Photography dei Sony World Photography Awards 2023
Outstanding Contribution to…