Professional and Student shortlisted images now available at worldphoto.org/press
Record-breaking entries to these prestigious, global awards: Over 326,000 submissions across 4 competitions from 195 countries and territories
Awards' Student competition shortlist also revealed
Photographer of the Year, ten Professional category winners, and overall Open Youth and Student winners announced at London Awards ceremony on April 17, 2019
Showcasing exceptional series by the best artists working worldwide in photography, the World Photography Organisation today reveals the shortlisted photographers for the Professional competition of the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards.
The Awards offer photographers unparalleled opportunity to showcase their art to a global audience, with past winning and shortlisted artists enjoying career-boosting benefits such as gallery representation, exhibitions and publishing deals. The 2019 shortlist presents a vibrant and diverse insight into photography today.
Specially selected by a panel of the world's leading judges from academia, museums, publishing, festivals and the media, the judges have chosen a powerful range of cutting-edge series across ten diverse categories. Often taken from larger bodies of work, the Professional shortlist contains series of five to ten exceptional images. Each series demonstrate artistic prowess and expertise in photographic techniques, editing and visual storytelling, providing audiences with captivating stories about humanity and the contemporary world.
Today's shortlisted artists offer their interpretations of the modern world in all its forms. Many tackle political issues: Daniel Ochoa de Olza's (Spain) architectural images bring to light border wall prototypes currently in place in San Diego near the Mexico / US border, whereas Toby Binder's (Germany) photo essay depicts the ubiquity of problems afflicting youth in Belfast, Ireland and the impact Brexit may have on the 1998 Peace Agreement. The beauty of the natural world and man's effect upon it can be seen in Kieran Dodds' (UK) aerial imagery of Ethiopia, highlighting the 95% loss of its native forests, and in the work of Leah Schretenthaler (USA), who uses traditional film and silver gelatin to shoot and print images of controversial infrastructure projects in Hawaii, which she then lasered out leaving scar-like blank spaces on the photographs.
Insights into lives and places that might otherwise be unknown are also shared: Alice Mann (South Africa) shows the unique and aspirational subculture surrounding all-female teams of drum majorettes, while Kohei Ueno (Japan) takes the viewer to the underwater world of competitive freediving and stunning portraits of the female boxers of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo are offered by Alessandro Grassani (Italy).
The success of those shortlisted is notable as the 2019 Professional competition received its highest number of entries to date, with submissions by artists from 161 countries as far afield as Gabon, Paraguay, and Cote D'Ivoire. This internationality is continued in the shortlist, with both emerging and established photographers recognised from 30 countries including St Kitts and Nevis, Finland Japan, Colombia and Iran.
All Professional shortlisted photographers will now go on to compete to become category winners, with the chance to be selected as Photographer of the Year winning$25,000 (USD). Second and third placings in each category will also be awarded on April 17 and their work will be shown at the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition in London, before touring globally.
Student competition
The Student shortlist features bodies of work by ten students at leading higher education institutions from across the world. Responding to the theme of Evolution', shortlisted photographers come from a range of countries including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Spain, Argentina and Canada.
All ten shortlisted photographers have won Sony Digital Imaging equipment and will be flown to London to attend the Awards ceremony on April 17, where the overall Student winner will be announced and will receive 30,000 (Euros) worth of Sony photography equipment for their institution.
In London, the ten students will take part in an intimate talk with Outstanding Contribution to Photography recipient Nadav Kander and a portfolio review with 2019 Student competition judge Jason Baron (Creative Director of Photography, BBC Creative) and the World Photography Organisation. As well as providing various networking opportunities for the students and their tutors, each student will also be considered for the 2019 Student Sony Grant.
Produced by the World Photography Organisation, the internationally acclaimed Sony World Photography Awards are one of the most important fixtures on the global photographic calendar. The Awards are now in their 12th year of partnership with headline sponsor Sony and consist of four competitions in total: Professional (for a body of works), Open (for a single image), Student (for academic institutions) and Youth (for 12-19-year olds).
Judging the Professional and Student shortlists
This year's Professional judging was chaired by Mike Trow (Editor, Photographer, Consultant, UK), who comments: The work in this year's Professional shortlist provoked a lot of debate and interest amongst the jury, with interesting conceptual work and juxtapositioning of images to make new narratives, seen alongside more traditional storytelling. It is in some ways a more challenging and contentious year than ever before - which is a great thing, and important for pushing the boundaries of photography and to challenge the perceptions and expectations of the audience.
Erin Barnett (Director of Exhibitions and Collections, International Center of Photography, USA) remarked:
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Professional and Student shortlisted images now available at worldphoto.org/press
