The Sony World Photography Awards announces the 10 category winnersand shortlists of the 2025 Open competition, recognising the best singleimages of 2024
● Open Photographer of the Year to be announced on 16 April at a special
gala ceremony in London
● 2025 exhibition opens at Somerset House from 17 April – 5 May 2025
The Sony World Photography Awards reveals today
the 10 category winners and shortlisted photographers in the 2025 Open competition. Now in
its 18th year, the Open competition celebrates the ability of an individual photograph to
capture and distil a singular moment, and to evoke a broader narrative. Entrants were
invited to submit their strongest single images from 2024, and the winners and shortlists
represent some of the most arresting photography from the past year.
Across this year’s competitions, over 419,000 images from over 200 countries and territories
were submitted to the Awards.
The Open Photographer of the Year will be announced at the Awards’ ceremony in London
on 16 April and will receive a $5,000 (USD) cash prize and a range of Sony digital imaging
equipment. Selected winning and shortlisted images will be shown as part of the Sony World
Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House from 17 April – 5 May 2025, and will then
travel to other locations.
This year’s Open category winners are:
ARCHITECTURE
Xuecheng Liu (China Mainland) for the photograph Center of the Cosmos, which shows
New York’s iconic Times Square from above, using a very wide angle to highlight the expanse
of the city.
CREATIVE
Jonell Francisco (Philippines) for Kem the Unstoppable, an elegantly photographed collage
portrait, alluding to Renaissance traditions of portraiture.
LANDSCAPE
Ng Guang Ze (Singapore) for his mesmerising black-and-white shot of a stream
meandering through grasslands into a lake in the distance, taken in Wenhai, Lijiang.
LIFESTYLE
Hajime Hirano (Japan) for his meticulously composed image of a street vendor selling
electronic parts in Akihabara, once Japan’s largest electronics town following a period of
rapid economic growth in the late 1950s.
MOTION
Olivier Unia (France) for Tbourida La Chute, in which the photographer captures the danger
and excitement of the moment a rider is thrown from their mount during a ‘tbourida,’ a
traditional Moroccan equestrian performance.
NATURAL WORLD & WILDLIFE
Estebane Rezkallah (France) for The Whale Raft, depicting a group of polar bears feasting
on the carcass of a whale in east Greenland.
OBJECT
Sussi Charlotte Alminde (Denmark) for Octopuses in the Sky, showcasing elaborate
handmade kites at the Fanø International Kite Fliers Meeting, one of the world’s largest kite
flying events.
PORTRAITURE
Yeintze Boutamba (Gabon) for Encounter, a tender portrait of two people shot in the
intimacy of a bedroom. The photographer wanted to immortalise this moment for the
sitters.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY
Khairizal Maris (Indonesia) for Celebrating Football Club Victories, which pictures the elation
of fans celebrating a win by their local football club by lighting flares in Bandung, West Java.
TRAVEL
Matjaž Šimic (Slovenia) for Ask a Shaman, depicting a group of shamans in La Paz, Bolivia,
where they play a major role in Native Bolivian traditional culture, shot against the brightly
painted local architecture.
This year’s Open competition was judged by Claudia Grimaldi Marks, Senior Manager, New
Creator Strategy at Getty Images.
The overall winners in the Student, Youth, Open and Professional competitions of the
Sony World Photography Awards 2025 will be announced on 16 April 2025.
