The World Photography Organization Announced The Nominees And Winners Of The 2018 Sony World Photography Awards During A Ceremony In London; Stay With Us For The Details Of This Event.

On this date, the World Photography Organization announced the nominees and winners of the Sony World Photography Awards in 2018 at a ceremony held in London; The title of the photographer of the year was awarded to British photographer Alice Tomlinson for the Ex-Voto collection along with a prize worth 25 thousand dollars. The jury praised the group for its technical excellence, beautiful production, and emotional depictions of the pilgrimage as a journey of discovery and sacrifice.

Tomlinson, selected as the photographer of the year among this competition’s ten professional category winners, had won the second or third title in all categories. Also, the winners of the free categories, young photographer and dance photographer of the year, were announced.

All winners attended the award ceremony and received Sony digital photography equipment. Their works will be recorded in the book of Sony’s best images of the year and exhibited at the 2018 Sony World Photography Exhibition in London. Candida Hofer also won a special award in this ceremony to complete her collection of medals.

The Sony World Photography Awards is a different kind of competition globally. London’s annual awards show brings together the best current and emerging talent from around the world, giving winners and shortlists the opportunity to showcase their work on an international stage. In the 11th edition of this competition, the record of 320,000 photos sent from more than 200 countries and regions was broken, some of which were the best contemporary photography of the last year.

Photographer of the year, Alice Tomlinson from Great Britain

Ex-Voto is the name of a personal project of 43-year-old Tomlinson, originally from London. Tomlinson’s work includes formal portraits, large and small format landscapes, still lifes with fine details of ex-votos as a Christian heart-religious belief (i.e., sacrifice) seen at the pilgrimage sites of Lourdes in France, Ballyverny in Ireland, and Grabarka in Poland. The photographer examines environmental, emotional, and identity issues.

He recently completed his master’s degree in the anthropology of travel, tourism, and pilgrimage and is known for the number of photography awards he has received.

Freelance photographer of the year; Vasselin Atanasov from Bulgaria:

Atanasov won the title of the best single photo among the ten category winners with Early Autumn and received a prize worth 5,000 dollars; Atanasov, an IT specialist, is a self-taught photographer who started photography in 2014. This work is a photo of the winter of Central Balkan National Park, Bulgaria.

Young photographer of the year; Gun Johnson, 16 years old, from America

Among photographers in the 12- to 19-year-old category, Megan Johnson was announced as the winner for an image she took of the cliffs near her home in Connecticut. This black-and-white image shows the complicated loneliness the photographer faces every day.

student photographer of the year; Samuel Baldock, from Canada

Buldak won the title as judged by students worldwide for his collection The Burden. This work beautifully shows the burden of plastic waste on the environment, highlighting the urgent need to remove this pollution. Buldak presented the Collège de Matane in Quebec, Canada, and won a prize of Sony equipment worth 30,000 euros.

outstanding collaboration in photography; Candida Hofer

German artist Candida Hofer is known as one of the contemporary photographers for her precise technique and method in photography; His powerful portraits of the edge and the void are held in collections worldwide. This award recognizes Hofer for his work with the media.

All the selected images have been exhibited from April 20 to May 6 at the Sony World Photography Festival 2018 booth at Somerset House, London.

Professional category finalists and winners:

With a master at documenting cultural and political events around the world to show their essence, the following photographers were selected by the judges for the best collection of photos in the world:

Architecture: Gianmaria Gava from Italy with the Buildings collection

2nd place is Edgar Martinez from Portugal; The third place is Carnitine Fullen from France.

Contemporary issues: Sweden’s Fredrik Lernried with Slum Ballet

Second place is Ergart Mitchell from Great Britain; Third place is Alfino Tomasini from Switzerland

Current news and events: Mohd Samsol Mohd Saeed from Malaysia, with the series Life Inside the Refugee Camp,

in second place, Luis Henry Agudelo Cano from Colombia; and Rasmus in third place Flindt Pedersen from Denmark.

Discovery: Alice Tomlinson from the UK with the  Ex-Voto collection

the second place is Anthony Gibotta from Italy; The third place is Maria Petrenko from Ukraine.

Landscape: Luca Locatelli from Italy with the White Gold collection

The second runner-up is Rohan Airly from Ireland; the Third place is Tomasz Padlow from Poland.

Wildlife and the natural world: Roseline Romistella from Italy with the Deep Land collection

second place Mi,ke Dobroner from America; 3rd place is Andrew Quilty from Australia.

Sports: Balaz Gardi from Hungary with Buzkashi collection

second place, Behnam Sahavi from Iran; third place is Matteo Armellini from Italy.

Inanimate objects: Edgar Martínez from Portugal with Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life, and Other Interludes

2nd place is Tristan Spinsky from America; The third place is Werner Andersson from Norway.

Sony World Photography Competitions

The purpose of the Sony World Photography Awards is to create a platform for the continuous development of photography culture; These competitions are held to recognize and promote significant photographic actions and emerging talents.

Sony is committed to supporting global photography. In this regard, it not only provides the awards but also awards the winners with the financial assistance of $3,500 for student competitions and $7,000 for professional matches to develop their projects.

In the following, you can see some of the selected works of this period of competitions;

photo of the year

Photo by Alice Tomlinson, UK, Photographer of the Year and the Discovery Professional category winner at the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Photo description: Untitled from the-Voto

Description of the collection: A blessed and folded manuscript that hides in the crevices of rocks or is engraved on stones in black ink. Or a ribbon wrapped around candle branches. These are all religious beliefs known as-Votoand found on Christian pilgrimage websites worldwide. It is often placed in an unknown and hidden form, and pilgrims use it to instill hope and gratitude and create a concrete narrative between the individual, nature, and faith. Based on the pilgrimage sites of formal portraits, large and small format landscapes and markers behind a person’s head.

These images, which were taken with a 5 x 4 large format video camera, show a unique silence and reflect the mysterious and unlimited quality in terms of time in the great spiritual thoughts of these sites. People and landscapes are All these images are anonymous and were taken in 2017/2016 ;

Photo of the year in the free category

Photo by Vasselin Atanasov, Freelance, Nature, and Landscape Photographer of the Year, in the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Photo description: Autumn has started to decorate the Balkan trees with its unique colors in Central Balkan National Park, Bulgaria.

Photo of the year, captured by a young photographer

Photo by Megan Jenson, USA, Young Photographer of the Year at the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Photo description: Johnson says:

I took this photo on October 22, 2017, on the rocks near my house. I took it with the iPhone 7 camera, thinking, ” life in black and white has more detail for me. ” This picture shows my situation well at home and school; Despite the existence of my family and social friends around me, I often feel alone and have been watching what is happening around me since then. A glimpse of the trees formed on the rock shows the courage these trees have to be in the community. have taken on While they may fall at any moment.

Photo of the year, captured by a student photographer

Photo by Samuel Baldock, Canada, Student Photographer of the Year, at the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Series Description: Baldock stated :

In short, my collection of photos includes poetic images that show people carrying plastic environmental waste; With these images’ help, I want to take measures to solve it, regardless of how fast or slow the environmental pollution is.

The commitment that the characters in the images have creates hope for changes regarding the accumulation of these wastes in the environment. This vast winter area shows a comparison between the volume of these wastes and the smallness of the environment .to give I have guided this creative process with the help of three strategies: awareness of what needs to be done to deal with this pollution, Human intervention for a durable and realistic solution to prevent corrosion and redesign with the help of character cooperation for the step-by-step production of images.

These pictures were taken in February 2018 in St. Lawrence, Quebec, Canada. The characters you see in these pictures are friends, acquaintances, and people from the recycling environment who agreed to cooperate in this project; In each encounter, I explained the issues related to this project and the effects of waste on the environment.

First place, with the subject of architecture

Photo by Gianmaria Gava, Italy, 1st place, 2018 Sony World Professional Championship.

Photo description: November 2017; Vienna, Austria.

Description of the collection: John Maria says:

Because this building had suitable criteria for the ” Buildings ” project, this image was recorded with a tripod.

Description of the collection: The building project was a research on the primary forms of architecture; When the elements used in it are removed, the structures appear in the form of a pure geometric solid, and for this reason, they are not habitable. However, these buildings create the function and accessibility of public and private spaces architecture.

The first place, with the subject of contemporary issues

Photo by Fredrik Lernried, Sweden, First Place Professional, Contemporary Issues, Sony World Photography Competition 2018.

Photo description: Luanda and Wendy hurriedly change their clothes to start the classroom in the corner of the house.

Description of the collection: Every Wednesday at Spurgeons Academy, the students of a school in the middle of the winding alleys and narrow streets of Kibera remove the classroom tables and chairs and the floor they sweep.

The school uniform has been changed to a bright color. When the teacher Mike Kamaya enters the classroom, the students are in the position they are placed and put one hand on the concrete wall where the ballet bar used to be. Classical music is played from a small portable speaker, and the class starts.

Dance is a way for children to express themselves and strengthen their confidence in life and the belief that they can become great people in the future. The ballet class is part of the children ‘s arts charity Eno Africa; This charitable institution implements art education projects for children who live in unfavorable conditions in Kenya. In Nairobi, they cooperate with two schools in Kibera and one in Matar, another rural area near the city.

Some children are currently in a ” Kenya Dance Center “studio. In a high-level area, they dance several days a week and live in a day and night school, and thanks to this process, they distance themselves from the harsh conditions and adversities of poverty.

First place, with the subject of creativity

Photo by Florian Ruiz, France, creative photographer in the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Description of the collection: Ruiz states :

In this snowy landscape, Inspired by the Japanese carved paintings, I hoped to record mortal moments and changing perceptions and emotions in a place where more radiation gathers.

The issue is the level of pollution of Becquerel landscapes, A unit that expresses the dissolution of an atom and the number of its mutations per second. With a focused suppression process, I was trying to show the changes in the bit in my images; Translucent effects, and fractured dimensions in a moving form, reveal an unstable world.

Then I created a vibration to deviate from the realism of the subject, which shows the presence of the beam in the image. These cues reconstruct and twist the landscape, leading to an epochal state and menacing danger behind the purity of the white landscape.

The first place, with the subject of news and contemporary events

Photo by Mohd Samuel Mohd Saeed, Malaysia, first place in the professional category, news and current events.

Photo Caption: The Bangladeshi army controlled the situation as Rohingya political refugees from Myanmar’s Rakhine state waited to receive food aid on September 28, 2017.

Description of the collection: Rohingyas are an ethnic group in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that was attacked on August 20; During this attack, more than 400 houses were burned, and nearly 125,000 Rohingya refugees to Bangladesh were killed.

International organizations claim that the cases of human rights violations and the summary of actions contradict what the Myanmar military has reported. More than 400,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh since the unrest in Rakhine state. This picture shows their life in the Melukheli camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

The first place, with the theme of nature landscape

Photo by Luca Locatelli, Italy, 1st place in professional category, 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Description of the photo: It is a view of the Turano marble valley in the Apuan Alps of Italy, one of the wealthiest marble regions. Marble, which we refer to as unique, was born hundreds of millions of years ago in darkness and tremendous pressure. Many generations have lived one after the other, disappearing and slowly settling at the bottom of the first sea.

Later, the earthquakes of the earth’s crust created mountains in the south of Europe, and the sea floor rose; Some of them increased by more than 6000 feet. Due to gravity, these bodies formed layers; until they became so hard and turned into white crystals and a stone that we call marble. They became our acquaintances.

Description of the collection: In the area full of Italian marble known as the Apuan Alps, the abundance of this stone is very impressive. This mine has been mined since ancient Rome, and the famous Italian stonemason Michael Angelo made most of his sculptures from this stone. Due to the increase in demand from Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, this region’s business is also booming. He has found a lot.

The photos of the workers of this magnificent area show their separate worlds: beautiful and exhausting.

First place, in the subject of nature and wildlife

Photo by Roseline Romistella from Italy, first place in Nature and Wildlife, Sony World Photography Competition 2018.

Description of the photo: Luigi is a young man from Silesia; The economic crisis and the high unemployment rate have caused the young people of small rural communities to return to their lands and engage in agriculture; Luigi helps his father in farming and taking care of their farm animals;

Every day he gets his hands dirty by farming and ranching to save money and marry his favorite woman, who is originally Romanian and met while working in the fields; Now, he can pay for his trip back to Sicily and start a new life.

Description of the collection: Rumistela says about this:

Deepland is the name of a personal journey that began in May 2016; I set off on a mule along the old Sicilian road, starting my course at Nebrudi, passing through Madonna and Pluritani, and to the Sicini mountain; This route was a country road that was suitable for domestic animals. Before expanding the modern road network in this area, this route was used for commuting and trade between cities and agricultural lands.

Until about 50 years ago, mules played an essential role in the life of Sicilians and were considered helpers for local farmers; Due to the economic crisis, many are moving to the suburbs; Especially the young man who was chosen in this problematic historical period to establish a new rural economy by working on the land, planting local products and raising livestock and raising cattle and earn a living in this way.

The project is divided into two parts: research on local communities still living in remote rural areas and documentation of dirt roads for mule crossings that have remained since ancient times. This is the last update of the previous 50 years of these areas.

First place, in the subject of portraits

Photo by British photographer Tom Odham, with the theme of portraiture in the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Photo Caption: Singer Colin Anthony in The Last Singers series.

Description of the collection: This image belongs to the last singer of this collection. A long time ago, Gilbert and George established the art in the East End of London, and every weekend in the corner of a restaurant, singers performed jazz standards and had many audiences from the East End of London. This entertained both men and women and kept the crowd in the restaurants. The audience for this type of entertainment has changed dramatically over the decades. Only one venue is legally allowed to continue to honor the tradition, albeit with a strict commitment to guest singers three times per weekend at home. London’s Palm Tree (The Palm Tree is a public house on one of London’s streets) was allowed to do this for more than 40 years.

With its familiarity and warmth, the Palm Tree House has become famous worldwide by maintaining its original Eastern European atmosphere, despite the neighborhood’s gentrification, finding value, the pressure of the parliament, and independent restaurants that have changed customers’ habits. It is a rich culture, but unfortunately, it remains unique. These are indeed the “last singers.”

After years of begging, this family-run restaurant allowed me to access the documents of the greats who still perform here and photograph the works from this historical period. Luckily, the results are well-preserved. A beautiful and commendable discovery that every visitor will admire.

First place in sports

Photo by Hungarian photographer Balaz Gardi, first place in the sports category in the 2018 Sony World Photography Competition.

Photo description: In the Persian New Year goat-fighting competition, a horseman fought for the headless carcass of a calf in Mazar-i-Sharif on March 21, 2017.

Description of the collection: In goat fighting, one of the ancient and skillful national sports of Afghans, riders compete to control the animal carcass, which brings them closer to the goal. Until 16 years after the US attack on the Taliban, this sport was under the authority of rival commanders who would do anything to maintain power in troubled countries to loot that country’s assets.

First place, with the subject of inanimate objects

Photo by Edgar Martínez Portugal Photography, first in the still life category in the 2018 Sony World Photography Professional category.

Photo Description: This piece of paper is about the word death written in a literary notebook.

Description of the collection: The topics of Hadith Nafs (Siloquy) and talking to oneself (Soliloquy) were presented at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine and Forensic Sciences INMLCF, Portugal. Many INMLCF images are related to forensic evidence, Including suicide notes, letters, and other objects used in suicide and other crimes, and are known as pathological tools and agents. The images here represent the types of words written by people who have committed suicide.

This work explores the crisis of covert and overt research, among other things, including the ethical justification and disclosure of similar cases. Edgar Martinez’s decision to work at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine is due to his desire to highlight the non-religious and historical roles that (in the sense of modernity) have been recognized in judicial discourses and scientific repetitions, representation, analysis, and investigation of death and corpse.

In the meantime, the photographer artist necessarily deals with the epistemological, psychological, and semantic subject in situations that are the responsibility of scientific personalities (medical, judicial, and thinking);

For example, what distinguishes a documentary image of a corpse or a crime scene from an idea of reproducing and gradually creating mental pictures of a corpse or crime scene? What effect do these distinctions have on the viewer’s imagination? How are the future and past horizons revealed in the face of different images?

The pre-selected suicide tool is used in detailed and scrutinizing the tensions and contradictions inherent in the observations and images of death (especially suicide), And necessarily, the profound and definitive roles that have been photographed (which may be misleading or accurate) along with the moral, subtle and epistemological reasons that are obtained along the way play a role in its awareness and comprehensibility.

You can visit the competition’s website to see all the selected images of the latest Sony photography competition.

Sony photography competitions are held every year, and if you have something to say in this profession, you can have a chance to win and be introduced as one of the best photographers in the world by sending your works to these competitions.