Sony World Photography Awards 2020
Artistically Arresting Images Through The Len’s Eye
Artistically Arresting Images Through The Len’s Eye
The internationally acclaimed Sony World Photography Awards is one of the most important fixtures in the global photographic calendar. Produced by the World Photography Organisation and now in its 13th year, the free-to-enter Awards are a global voice for photography and provide a vital insight into contemporary photography today. For both established and emerging artists, the Awards offer world-class opportunities for exposure of their work, along with recognising the world's most influential artists working in the medium.
For 2020, the World Photography Organisation is delighted to announce the overall winners, with the coveted Photographer of the Year title and accompanying $25,000 prize awarded to Pablo Albarenga (Uruguay) for his series Seeds of Resistance.
Seeds of Resistance is a body of work which pairs photographs of landscapes and territories in danger from mining and agribusinesses with portraits of the activists fighting to conserve them. In 2017, at least 207 leaders and environmentalists were killed while protecting their communities from projects threatening their territories. According to a 2018 report by Global Witness, most of these cases occurred in Brazil with 57 assassinations being recorded, of which 80% were against people defending the Amazon.
Albarenga's series explores the bond between the defenders and their lands – a sacred area in which hundreds of generations of their ancestors rest. In the photographs, the main characters in the stories are seen from above, as though they are laying down their lives for their territory.
Mike Trow, Chair of the 2020 Professional competition says: “This year's winner comes from the Creative category and is a brilliant set of images which offers a powerful visual record of how deforestation goes hand in hand with the destruction of communities and peoples. The judging process this year was challenging - there were a number of extraordinary stories and sets of images that could have won the overall title, but Seeds of Resistance