Grand Prize Winners Announced at 2015 Sony World Photography awards,
The Honorary Jury of the world’s largest photography competition today names American photographer John Moore as the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards’ L’Iris d’Or/ Professional Photographer of the Year, amongst other awardees.
Chosen from the winners of the awards’ thirteen professional categories, the winning work “Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital” is a hard-hitting series of images that cut to the heart of this human tragedy. Moore, a Senior Staff Photographer and Special Correspondent for Getty Images, and the winning photographs have been universally credited for the early exposure of the scale of the Ebola epidemic in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia and the epicentre of the deadly disease. He collects $25,000 USD as his prize.
Professional category winners
The winners of thirteen Professional categories were also announced today. From across the world and covering a range of topics, the winning works each showcase the very best contemporary photography in their genre. The winners are:
- Architecture- Winner – Cosmin Bumbuț, Romania
- Arts & Culture- Winner – Aristide Economopoulos, United States
- Campaign- Winner – Sebastian Gil Miranda, France (lives in Argentina)
- Conceptual- Rahul Talukder, Bangladesh
- Contemporary Issues – Scott Typaldos, Switzerland
- Current Affairs- John Moore, United States
- Landscape- Simon Norfolk, United Kingdom
- Lifestyle – Li Fan China
- People- Giovanni Troilo, Italy
- Portraiture- Rubén Salgado Escudero, Spain (lives in Myanmar)
- Sport – Riccardo Bononi, Italy
- Still Life- Donald Weber, Canada
- Travel – Bernhard Lang, Germany
Open Photographer of the Year
Amateur German photographer Armin Appel was named the overall Open Photographer of the Year and received $5,000 for his image “Schoolyard”. 79,264 images were entered to the Open competition.
Youth Photographer of the Year
Nineteen-year-old student Yong Lin Tan from Malaysia was awarded this title. Open to photographers aged 19 and under and judged on a single shot, the atmospheric winning image was taken in the back alley of the photographer’s grandmother’s house in Kedah, Malaysia. 6,675 entries were received to the Youth competition in total.
Student Photographer of the Year
Russian photographer Svetlana Blagodareva from Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University beat nine other shortlisted students from around the world to collect this award. Her prize is €35,000 worth of Sony photography equipment for her university.
Outstanding Contribution to Photography – Elliott Erwitt
Renowned Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt was honoured at the awards with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize. An intimate show celebrating a combination of Erwitt’s most familiar and lesser known work from across his 60 year career will be presented at Somerset House, London as part of the Sony World photography Awards exhibition.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter, creator of the world’s most popular mobile photography and art website— TheAppWhisperer.com— TheAppWhisperer platform has been a pivotal cyberspace for mobile artists of all abilities to learn about, to explore, to celebrate and to share mobile artworks. Joanne’s compassion, inclusivity, and humility are hallmarks in all that she does, and is particularly evident in the platform she has built. In her words, “We all have the potential to remove ourselves from the centre of any circle and to expand a sphere of compassion outward; to include everyone interested in mobile art, ensuring every artist is within reach”, she has said. Promotion of mobile artists and the art form as a primary medium in today’s art world, has become her life’s focus. She has presented lectures bolstering mobile artists and their art from as far away as the Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea to closer to her home in the UK at Focus on Imaging. Her experience as a jurist for mobile art competitions includes: Portugal, Canada, US, S Korea, UK and Italy. And her travels pioneering the breadth of mobile art includes key events in: Frankfurt, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Paris, Brazil, London. Pioneering the world’s first mobile art online gallery - TheAppWhispererPrintSales.com has extended her reach even further, shipping from London, UK to clients in the US, Europe and The Far East to a global group of collectors looking for exclusive art to hang in their homes and offices. The online gallery specialises in prints for discerning collectors of unique, previously unseen signed limited edition art. Her journey towards becoming The App Whisperer, includes (but is not limited to) working for a paparazzi photo agency for several years and as a deputy editor for a photo print magazine. Her own freelance photographic journalistic work is also widely acclaimed. She has been published extensively both within the UK and the US in national and international titles. These include The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Popular Photography & Imaging, dpreview, NikonPro, Which? and more recently with the BBC as a Contributor, Columnist at Vogue Italia and Contributing Editor at LensCulture. Her professional photography has also been widely exhibited throughout Europe, including Italy, Portugal and the UK. She is currently writing several books, all related to mobile art and is always open to requests for new commissions for either writing or photography projects or a combination of both. Please contact her at: [email protected]
