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.
The L’Iris d’Or Photgrapher of the Year 2015
©John Moore, United States, 2015
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 is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
