Sony Announced 2015 World Photography Awards Winners

Sony has announced the winners of the 2015 World Photography Awards. John Moore is the winner of the 2015 Photographer of the Year and of the 2015 L’Iris d’Or title for his poignant “Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital” project.

World Photography Awards are the world’s largest photography competition, and the 2015 awards attracted record-breaking entries, with 173,444 images submitted from 171 countries, confirming its position as the world’s biggest photography competition. The 2015 World Photography Awards contest has featured 13 categories for professional photographers. After the winners of each category had been selected, only one of them was chosen as the 2015 Photographer of the Year and the 2015 L’Iris d’Or recipient. His name is John Moore and he is an American photographer who has covered the Ebola outbreak in Monrovia, Liberia.

The winning work “Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital” is a hard-hitting series of images that cut to the heart of this human tragedy. Moore is a Senior Staff Photographer and Special Correspondent for Getty Images, and his winning photographs have been universally credited for the early exposure of the scale of the Ebola epidemic in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia.

Talking at the awards Moore said: “I collect this award tonight in recognition of all the photographers working in difficult and dangerous places right now, and tomorrow. I am very grateful to the Liberians who allowed me to photograph them on their most difficult days. I will always be grateful.”

Galleries of all the winning and finalist images can be seen at World Photo.

Full list of 2015 World Photography Winners confirmed by Sony and WPO

PROFESSIONAL CATEGORY WINNERS AND FINALISTS

The winners, plus the 2nd and 3rd placed photographers, of thirteen Professional categories were also announced today.

From across the world and covering a range of topics, the winning works each showcase the very best contemporary photography in their genre. The winners are:

Architecture- Winner – Cosmin Bumbuț, Romania

• 2nd – Massimo Siragusa, Italy
• 3rd – Vadim Sivak, Ukraine

Arts & Culture- Winner – Aristide Economopoulos, United States

• 2nd – Alessandra Bello, Italy
• 3rd – Rich Wiles, United Kingdom (lives in Palestine)
• Campaign- Winner – Sebastian Gil Miranda, France (lives in Argentina)
• 2nd – Jonathan Syer United Kingdom
• 3rd – Eduardo Leal, Portugal (lives in UK)

Conceptual- Rahul Talukder, Bangladesh

• 2nd – Daesung Lee, South Korea (lives in France)
• 3rd – Alejandro Almaraz, Argentina

Contemporary Issues – Scott Typaldos, Switzerland

• 2nd – Corentin Fohlen, France
• 3rd – Annalisa Natali Murri, Italy

Current Affairs- John Moore, United States

• 2nd – Valery Melnikov, Russia
• 3rd – Herman Verwey, South Africa

Landscape- Simon Norfolk, United Kingdom

• 2nd – Peng-Chun Yen, Taiwan
• 3rd – Giulio di Sturco, Italy

Lifestyle – Li Fan China

• 2nd – Dovile Dagiene, Lithuania
• 3rd – Ramil Gilvanov, Russia

People- Giovanni Troilo, Italy

• 2nd – Johan Bavman, Sweden
• 3rd – Liza Van der Stock, Belgium

Portraiture- Rubén Salgado Escudero, Spain (lives in Myanmar)

• 2nd – Dougie Wallace, United Kingdom
• 3rd – Jens Juul, Denmark

Sport – Riccardo Bononi, Italy

• 2nd – Irina Dainakova, Belarus
• 3rd – Jonathan Yeap Chin Tiong, Singapore

Still Life- Donald Weber, Canada

• 2nd – Peter Franck, Germany
• 3rd – Mong-Yong Sim, Malaysia (lives in Taiwan)

Travel – Bernhard Lang, Germany

• 2nd – Nadia Dias, India
• 3rd – Yoko Naito, Japan

2015 Open Photographer of the Year announced, too

Professional photographers or not, the World Photography Awards competition also includes an Open category that rewards greatness in single shots.

There are 10 subcategories in this section. Armin Appel from Germany was elected the 2015 Open Photographer of the Year. He won the Architecture subcategory. Here are all the winners from the Open categories:

• Architecture: Armin Appel from Germany;
• Arts & Culture: Hector Munoz Huerta from Mexico;
• Enhanced: Antony Crossfield from the UK;
• Low Light: Nick Ng from Malaysia;
• Nature & Wildlife: Antoine Weis from Switzerland;
• Panoramic: Norman Quinn from the UK;
• People: Saleh Rozati from Iran;
• Smile: Wilson Lee from Hong Kong;
• Split Second: Jaime Massieu from Spain;
• Travel: Yasen Georgiev from Bulgaria.

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO PHOTOGRAPHY – ELLIOTT ERWITT

Renowned Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt was honoured at the awards with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize.

The photographer is noted worldwide for his candid and often ironic black and white images capturing everyday life. The prize recognises Erwitt as a modest master who approaches both his commercial and personal work with wry and witty visual brilliance.

An intimate show celebrating a combination of Erwitt’s most familiar and lesser known work from across his 60 year career will be presented at Somerset House, London as part of the Sony World photography Awards exhibition.

The prize had previously been awarded to Mary Ellen Mark, William Eggleston, Eve Arnold, Bruce Davidson, Marc Riboud, William Klein and Phil Stern.

YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Nineteen-year-old student Yong Lin Tan from Malaysia was awarded the Youth Photographer of the Year title. Open to photographers aged 19 and under and judged on a single shot, the atmospheric winning image was taken in the back alley of the photographer’s grandmother’s house in Kedah, Malaysia. It was chosen from the three Youth category winners who were announced on 31 March. 6,675 entries were received to the Youth competition in total.

STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Russian photographer Svetlana Blagodareva from Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University beat nine other shortlisted students from around the world to collect the Student Photographer of the Year title. Her prize is €35,000 worth of Sony photography equipment for her university. The Student Focus programme is one of the world’s largest international programmes for photography students and works with 230 institutions across six continents.

EXHIBITION AND BOOK

All the winning and shortlisted images will be exhibited at Somerset House, London from 24 April – 10 May along with a dedicated curation to Outstanding Contribution to Photography recipient, Elliott Erwitt. Running alongside is our guest exhibition, #FutureofCities – a social documentary photography project examining the mass urban shift of the global population in our major cities presented by Sony’s Global Imaging Ambassors and Panos Pictures. In addition, for the first time visitors to the exhibition will be able to buy prints of the photographs on display courtesy of the hub from theprintspace.

The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the winning and selected shortlisted work. It is available to buy from http://www.worldphoto.org.

Galleries of all the winning and finalist images can be seen at World Photo.