Pablo Albarenga of Uruguay has been awarded the Photographer of the Year title and accompanying $25,000 prize at this year’s Sony World Photography Awards.
The World Photography Organisation has today announced the overall winners for the 2020 awards, including the 10 category winners of the Professional competition and the winners of the Open, Student and Youth competitions.
Albarenga’s winning series, Seeds of Resistance, highlights territories that are in danger from mining and agribusiness, paired with portraits of activists fighting to conserve them.
In 2017 alone, 207 leaders and environmentalists were killed while protecting their communities from these harmful projects. Most of these cases (57) occurred in Brazil, according to a 2018 report by Global Witness, and 80 per cent of these were activists defending the Amazon. Albarenga’s series looks at the bond the activists have with the land.
Sony World Photography Awards 2020 - Professional Category Winners
Architecture - Sandra Herber (Canada), Ice Fishing Huts, Lake Winnipeg
Creative - Pablo Albarenga (Uruguay), Seeds of Resistance
Discovery - Maria Kokunova (Russian Federation), The Cave
Documentary - Chung Ming Ko (Hong Kong SAR), Wounds of Hong Kong
Environment - Robin Hinsch (Germany), Wahala
Landscape - Ronny Behnert (Germany), Torii
Natural world & wildlife - Brent Stirton (South Africa), Pangolins in Crisis
Portraiture - Cesar Dezfuli (Spain), Passengers
Sport - Ángel López Soto (Spain), Senegalese Wrestlers
The UK’s Tom Oldham was named as the Open Photographer of the Year and receives $5,000 for his image, Black Francis - a portrait of Pixies frontman Charles Thompson (‘Black Francis’) originally taken for MOJO Magazine.
Greek student Ioanna Sakellaraki was named as Student Photographer of the Year for her series, Aeiforia. Sakellaraki’s collection shows nighttime photographs of solar panels, wind turbines and battery farms on the small island of Tilos in Greece, the first in the Mediterranean to be run almost entirely by renewable energy.
The Youth Photographer of the Year title was awarded to 19-year-old Hsien-Pang Hsieh from Taiwan for his image of a street performer, titled ‘Hurry’. The street performer appears to be walking quickly but is standing still. Hsien-Pang sad he was inspired by his experience as a student in Germany, a comment on the intensive pace of life.
Click through the gallery above to see a selection of the winning images.
