2025 Sony World Photography Awards: Winners revealed
The winners of the 2024 Sony World Photography Awards have been announced, with Zed Nelson named as Photographer of the Year for The Anthropocene Illusion, a project exploring the fractured relationship between humans and the natural world.Nelson's project takes its name from the term Anthropocene - the current geological epoch where human activity has become the dominant force shaping the Earth's environment.The project explores the tension between the human desire to connect with nature and ongoing environmental degradation.
Nelson's constructed environments highlight the growing gap between conservation efforts and ecological destruction. The Anthropocene Illusion goes beyond a documentary, offering a thought-provoking exploration of modern human life in an era shaped by human impact.
Nelson's work, selected from the 10 professional competition category winners, triumphed in the wildlife and nature category.Here are the other category winners.
Architecture & Design
The Tokyo Toilet Project by Ulana Switucha (Canada)
The Tokyo Toilet Project in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan, is an urban redevelopment initiative aimed at creating modern public restrooms that encourage use. These images are part of a larger series documenting the architectural design of these structures within their urban setting.
Creative
Rhi-Entry by Rhiannon Adam (United Kingdom)
In 2018, Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa launched a global search for eight artists to join him on a week-long lunar mission aboard SpaceX's Starship, the first civilian deep space flight. The mission would follow a path similar to Apollo 8's 1968 journey, which inspired astronaut Bill Anders to suggest NASA should have sent poets to capture the awe of space.In 2021, Rhiannon Adam was chosen as the only female crew member from one million applicants and for three years she immersed herself in the space industry. Maezawa abruptly cancelled the mission, leaving the crew to pick up the pieces of their disrupted lives - the experience informed Adam's thought provoking project.
Documentary projects
Divided Youth of Belfast by Toby Binder (Germany)
For years, Toby Binder has been documenting the experiences of young people born after the peace agreement in Northern Ireland, capturing what it means to grow up amid the intergenerational tensions in both Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods.
Environment
Alquimia Textil by Nicolás Garrido Huguet (Peru)
Alquimia Textil is a collaborative project by Nicolás Garrido Huguet and fashion designer María Lucía Muñoz, highlighting the natural dyeing techniques of Pumaqwasin artisans in Chinchero, Cusco, Peru. The project seeks to raise awareness and preserve these ancestral practices, which involve hours of meticulous work often overlooked in the textile industry.
Landscape
The Strata of Time by Seido Kino (Japan)
This project invites viewers to consider what it means for a country to grow, and the advantages and disadvantages linked to that growth, by overlaying archival photographs from the 1940s-60s within current scenes.
Perspectives
The Journey Home from School by Laura Pannack (United Kingdom)
Laura Pannack's project explores the tumultuous public lives of young people in the gang-governed Cape Flats area of Cape Town, South Africa, where their daily commute carries the risk of death. Using handmade, lo-fi experimental techniques, this project explores how young people have to walk to and from school avoiding the daily threat of gang crossfire.
Portraiture
M'kumba by Gui Christ (Brazil)
M'kumba is an ongoing project that illustrates the resilience of Afro-Brazilian communities in the face of local religious intolerance.Gui Christ wanted to photograph a proud, young generation representing African deities and mythological tales.
Sport
Shred the Patriarchy by Chantal Pinzi (Italy)
India, the world's most populous country, only has a handful of female skaters.Through the art of falling and getting back up, these women challenge stereotypes, fight marginalisation and reclaim public spaces in both urban and rural areas.
Still life
Still Waiting by Peter Franck (Germany)
Still Waiting presents collages that capture moments of pause, of waiting.
Open - motion
Tbourida La Chute by Olivier Unia
The Open competition celebrates the power and dynamism of a single photograph. Olivier Unia was chosen for his photograph Tbourida La Chute.Many of the photographs taken during a traditional Moroccan 'tbourida' show the riders firing their rifles. With this image, the photographer wanted to share another side of the event, and show how dangerous it can be when a rider is thrown from their mount.
Student photographer of the year
The Last Day We Saw the Mountains and the Sea by Micaela Valdivia Medina (Peru)
Medina's project explores female prison spaces across Chile, and the dynamics that shape the lives of incarcerated women and their families.
Youth photographer of the year
For the 2025 Youth competition, photographers aged 19 and under were invited to respond to an Open Call and enter their best images from the last year. The winner, chosen from a shortlist of 11 photographers, was Daniel Dian-Ji Wu, Taiwan, 16 years old, for his image of a skateboarder doing a trick, silhouetted against a sunset in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.
Outstanding contribution to photography
The prestigious Outstanding Contribution to Photography 2025 was awarded to acclaimed documentary photographer Susan Meiselas.
For more than five decades, photographer Susan Meiselas has focused her lens on capturing compelling stories from diverse communities. From documenting the lives of women performing striptease at rural American fairs to chronicling the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, her work provides an intimate portrait of resilience and humanity.
All photos courtesy of Sony World Photography Awards 2025. Exhibition at Somerset House, London, 17 April – 5 May 2025.
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