The Overall Winners of the Sony World Photography Awards 2022.
The World Photography Organisation has announced the overall winners of the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards 2022.
Adam Ferguson from Australia has won the Photographer of the Year title, the accompanying $25,000 cash prize and a range of Sony digital imaging kits.
Please click on the images for a look at the winning photographs.
WINNER - PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
Adam Ferguson, Australia. Best series of work, named Migrantes
IMAGE: Migrantes is a series of black and white self-portraits of migrants in Mexico, taken as they waited to cross the border into the United States.
Photographed in collaboration with the subjects, Ferguson set up the scene for each image, mounting a medium format camera on a tripod with a cable release and then stepped back, allowing the individuals to choose the moment of capture and participate in the process of documenting their lives. Photograph: Adam Ferguson, Australia
Also announced are the ten category winners alongside the second and third rd places in the Professional competition as well as the overall winners of the Open, Student and Youth competitions.
The winning entries in each of the categories:
WINNER ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Domagoj Burilovic (Croatia) for his series Dorf
IMAGE: The photo is a photo montage of a historic village house and local forests and plants taken in the Croatian agricultural region of Slavonia. It is part of a broader story about the mass exodus of people from the region.
This montage was created in 2021 and its parts were shot in 2020 and 2021. Photograph: Domagoj Burilović, Croatia, Winner, Professional, Architecture & Design, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
Dorf is the German word for village. In the 19th century, the Croatian region of Slavonia was inhabited by people from all nations of the Austro-Hungarian empire.
A fast economic development began with the exploitation of forests and land.
Villages became an elementary demographic unit. German colonists made the largest cultural impact through language, crafts and architecture.
Instead of building with mud, people started to build with baked bricks – this raised the quality of life.
The irony of history is that today, due to the impact of the war in Croatia and subsequent industry decline, the population is leaving Slavonia for Germany, in search of a better life.
With the extinction of the village, the historic houses that became part of its cultural identity are the first to decay.
These photographs are a photo montage of houses and local nature.
The exploitation of nature was the reason these houses came into being – now this very nature is destroying them.
OPEN CATEGORY PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
Scott Wilson, United Kingdom. Judged on a single image
IMAGE: A wild mustang stallion kicks up a dust storm in northwestern Colorado. Photograph: Scott Wilson, United Kingdom, Open Photographer of the Year, Open, Natural World & Wildlife, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
Tri Nguyen, Vietnam. Best single image taken by any photographer aged 12-19.
IMAGE: This photo is part of a series that investigates self-reflection and a yearning to break the mould.
Rather than appreciating only beautiful and perfect things, it is a world untainted by societal judgment, a celebration of imperfection.
The photograph depicts a young man basking in artificial moonlight as he feels himself resonating with the derelict, messy background.
The moonlight symbolises a spotlight shining on the young man, and his longing to accept his flaws. Photograph: Tri Nguyen, Vietnam, Monthly Winner, Youth, 2022 Youth competition - Portraiture, 2021 Sony World Photography Awards
STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
Ezra Bohm, Netherlands. Best series of work taken by any student aged 30 and under.
IMAGE: Named the Identity of Holland, This series shows the last people wearing the traditional costumes of Holland.
This work is intended to celebrate and cherish the old culture of The Netherlands. These groups have something in common that we often miss in modern society: Solidarity, geniality and collective pride.
Modern citizens ofter are disconnected from their own roots, which Ezra thinks is very important to form your identity.
Ezra says I romanticize a world that I want to be a part of. The people in the picture are my superheroes, they have to inspire people to look back at our origins and learn from the past. Photograph: Ezra Bohm, Netherlands, Finalist, Student, Connections, 2021 Sony World Photography Awards
ENVIRONMENT WINNER
Shunta Kimura (Japan) for his series Living in the Transition
IMAGE: A man carries a large quantity of straw on his head. I photographed these pictures in Gabura Union, Bangladesh, between the beginning of October and late November 2021.
Gabura Union is located on the southwestern coast of Bangladesh. It is one of the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change, and many residents often suffer from its effects.
These include river erosion, landslides, rising salinity levels in freshwater sources and collapsing infrastructure, caused by the tropical cyclones that occur frequently.
The purpose of this photo essay is to capture and communicate the situation of people living quietly in this transition, impacted by climate change. Photograph: Shunta Kimura, Japan, Finalist, Professional, Environment, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
DOCUMENTARY PROJECTS WINNER
Jan Grarup (Denmark) for his series The Children of the Financial Collapse in Venezuela
IMAGE: A young girl being transported home by her dad along the garbage site on the abandoned airstrip outside Maicao in Colombia.
More than 8.5 million people in Colombia urgently need help. The financial collapse in Venezuela has left many with no access to emergency aid, shelter, clean drinking water or food.
Children pay the highest price. Photograph: Jan Grarup, Denmark, Finalist, Professional, Documentary Projects, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
CREATIVE WINNER
Alnis Stakle (Latvia) for his series Mellow Apocalypse
IMAGE: An archival pigment ink print, on rag paper. 150 x 150cm. Photograph: Alnis Stalke, Latvia, Winner, Professional, Creative, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
I am interested in the fate of canonised artistic, scientific and journalistic images and their potential to embody contemporary meanings.
For my collages, I have used images from the open-source collections at art museums, scientific institutions and image banks, whose archives may be considered iconic testimonies of the present and the past.
The collages are grounded in my search for syntactic visual language connections pertaining to various periods, media and domains of visual culture.
The collages make use of the ideas and technical codes established in visual communication that transcend the borderlines of ages, media and cultures: the codes that are so deeply ingrained in the culture that they are used without thinking, and are understood through pre-existing schemas in the recipients' minds.
LANDSCAPE WINNER
Lorenzo Poli (Italy) for his series Life on Earth
IMAGE: An uninhabitable volcanic desert in the Icelandic Highlands. The climatic conditions here are so harsh that, for the majority of the year, life doesn't thrive. Photograph: Lorenzo Poli, Italy, Winner, Professional, Landscape, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
Science and religions may all fall short in explaining the incredible miracle of life which, through millennials of evolution, has transformed barren land into a living planet.
Mother Earth has been regarded by humans through the centuries as a fertility goddess; water is the most incredible terrestrial element, with all living beings depending on it to thrive.
Water is the common denominator of the living world.
There is an untamed world between sacred and magic, where the essence of life is safeguarded by silence, where the outer and the inner world coincide.
This is what I am seeking to photograph. As philosopher Alan Watts said: 'Each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed, exists in the way it does, only because everything else around it does." And "If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.'
PORTFOLIO WINNER
Hugh Fox (United Kingdom) for his submission Portfolio
IMAGE: I saw this person having a quiet reflective moment at my local park. It made me feel nostalgic and calm. Photograph: Hugh Fox, United Kingdom, Winner, Professional, Portfolio, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
A selection of images taken over the last couple of years. For me, this series evokes the quiet, isolated, reflective moments I felt during the pandemic.
SPORT WINNER
Ricardo Teles (Brazil) for his series Kuarup
IMAGE: Kuikuro fighters from Huka-huka present themselves for the final competition. Photograph: Ricardo Teles, Brazil, Winner, Professional, Sport, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
The Kuarup is a ritual of the Xingu Indigenous Brazilian to honour the illustrious dead -- it is the farewell and closing of a mourning period.
The celebration takes place once a year in different villages and lasts for three days. The highlight of this celebration is a competition of a martial art called Huka-huka, similar to the Greco-Roman wrestling fight, which has competitive symbolism that shows the strength and virility of the young men.
These photographs were taken during a Kuarup celebration in the Afukuri village of the Kuikuro ethnic group.
This year's ritual honoured the people who lost their lives between the years 2020 and 2021: Four of five were victims of COVID-19.
STILL LIFE WINNER
Haruna Ogata (Japan) and Jean-Etienne Portail (France) for their series Constellation
IMAGE: These images were taken in a studio in Paris in September 2020 -- for the pure creation of a still life photo. Photograph: Haruna & Jean Etienne Ogata & Portail, Japan, Winner, Professional, Still Life, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
Around a strong geometrical framework, Haruna Ogata arranges shapes and colours. Freed from depth, they attune, they overlap and complement each other.
The delicacy of the traditional Japanese colours contrasts with the lines and they float like constellations.
On an intangible background, Haruna Ogata and Jean-Etienne Portail create a singular world.
WILDLIFE & NATURE WINNER
Milan Radisics (Hungary) for his series The Fox's Tale
IMAGE: Over eight months, I spent almost every night sitting at the window of my cottage in the middle of the forest -- where wild animals live almost as neighbours of the villagers.
The young vixen appears in the village after dusk, circles an hour and a half, and appears in a courtyard several times. I observed her movements and behaviour from the darkened room and took the exposure remotely.
I named her Roxy. I set the lights in advance, like in a studio, and waited for the protagonist to walk into the scenes.
She always surprises me, showing a new side, and I have had to solve many technical, theoretical, and physical challenges in the process of photographing her.
During the lockdown, both sides were forced to adjust: man to the wilds of the forest, animals to the human environment. Photograph: Milan Radisics, Hungary, Winner, Professional, Wildlife & Nature, 2022 Sony World Photography Awards
Published with permission from the World Photography Organisation.
Photographs curated by Rajesh Karkera/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
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