The extent of our travel plans right now may consist of bedroom-to-living-room commutes and supermarket stock-ups, but a surefire way to remind ourselves of the wonders of the world is through photography. What better way to do so than through the eyes of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards (SWPA) open competition winners?
The SWPA recently revealed the category winners and 100 shortlisted entries after receiving more than 350,000 submissions in its massive 2020 competition. Produced by the World Photography Organisation, the award’s annual open competition recognises the best photographs produced in the past 12 months, across categories including architecture, creative, culture, still life and portraiture.
The 10 category winners will now compete for the $5,000 overall prize and prestigious Open Photographer of the Year title, which will be announced online on June 9. In the running are three photographers from Australia, two hailing from both the UK and China and one each from Colombia, Italy and Argentina.
Scroll below to see the 10 category winners in the Sony World Photography Awards Open competition.
Architecture winner: Italian photographer Rosaria Sabrina Pantano’s black and white photograph is of the 38° Parallelo, a pyramid shaped sculpture by Mauro Staccioli which stands exactly on the 38th parallel.
Landscape winner: A solitary iceberg is captured against the fjord walls in North-East Greenland National Park by Craig McGowan from Australia.
Culture winner: Antoine Veling (Australia) captures an impassioned moment between fans and Iggy Pop as they share the stage at his 2019 Sydney Opera House concert.
Motion winner: Alec Connah (UK) immortalises the demolishing of four cooling towers of Ironbridge power station in Shropshire.
Natural World & Wildlife winner: Shadowing a ying-yang symbol, two cheetahs in Botswana lick each other after a successful hunt, by Guofei Li (China).
Still Life winner: Highlighting the pollution issue of ocean plastics, Jorge Reynal (Argentina) captures a seemingly suffocating fish in a plastic bag.
Street Photography winner: Santiago Mesa (Colombia) captures a moment between workers and the Medellín riot squad during a demonstration in Latin America in protest against the rising cost of living, inequality and lack of opportunity.
Travel winner: An iron-ore train in Mauritania makes it 700km long journey from Nouadhibou to Zouérat. Taken by Adrian Guerin (Australia).
Portraiture winner: Tom Oldham (UK) directs Pixies frontman Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis) to acknowledge his feeling of frustration following too many photoshoots for this black and white portrait.
