Grand prize winners announced for the world’s largest photography competition – 2017 Sony World Photography Awards

Grand prize winners announced for the world’s largest photography
competition – 2017 Sony World Photography Awards

·         Belgian photographer Frederik Buyckx named
Photographer the Year and wins $25,000 prize for best photography series

·         Best single shot awarded to
Russian photographer Alexander Vinogradov

·         Ten further photographers recognized for
bodies of work in the Professional competition

·         Martin Parr honored with Outstanding
Contribution to Photography prize

·         Winning images exhibited at Somerset
House, London 21 April – 7 May
·         Images available for publication at press.worldphoto.org

Frederik Buyckx’s winning series “Whiteout”
captures the transformation of nature when winter arrives. Judges called the
work ‘beautiful’ and hope the series will inspire photographers to capture
elegance and not overlook the importance and beauty of what is present in our
everyday.

(ASIA PACIFIC, 20 April 2017) – The World Photography Organisation today
names Belgian photographer Frederik Buyckx as the Sony World Photography
Awards’ 2017 Photographer of the Year.  The Awards’ judges were challenged
to find the best photographic series and were taken by the beauty, scale and
effort involved in Buyckx’s winning work titled “Whiteout”.

The 2017 Awards received over 227,000 entries from 183 countries and is the
world’s largest photography competition.  An exhibition of all the winning
and shortlisted work, along with rare image by British photographer Martin
Parr, recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize, will run
at Somerset House, London from 21 April – 7 May.           

Chosen from the winners of the Awards’ ten
Professional categories, Chair of Judges Zelda Cheatle says of Frederik
Buyckx’s photographs: “I have chosen a series of landscapes so that we
may return to the essence of looking at photography. Landscape is often
overlooked but it is central to our existence. These are beautiful pictures
made by a serious photographer, and they are to be enjoyed. I hope this award
will inspire many more photographers to take pictures that do not simply
encompass the terrible aspects of life in these troubled times but also capture
some of the joys and loveliness in each and every environment.” 

Buyckx was revealed as the Photographer of the
Year and presented the $25,000 (USD) prize at an awards ceremony in London
attended by international industry experts. At the same ceremony, the category
winners of the Professional competition were announced, along with the overall
winners of the Open, Youth and Student competitions. 

Scott Gray, CEO, World
Photography Organisation comments: “I am especially proud of this
year’s selection of Photographer of the Year.  I feel that in many cases
it is easy to shock but that it can be so tremendously difficult to capture a
sophisticated elegance, that really is so beautiful it shows the medium of
photography at its best.” 

All winning photographers were flown to the
London awards ceremony and received the latest Sony digital imaging equipment
as their prize.

Celebrating its 10th anniversary
this year, the Sony World Photography Awards annually recognize and rewards the
finest contemporary photography from the last year. Free to enter and open to
all photographers, the awards are an authoritative voice in the photographic
industry that has the power to shape the careers of its winning and shortlisted
photographers. The 2018 Sony World Photography Awards open for entries on June
1, 2017.

PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR – FREDERIK BUYCKX,
BELGIUM

Born in Antwerp in 1984,
Frederik Buyckx is a freelance photographer for the Belgian newspaper De
Standaard. Buyckx’s images have been published and exhibited internationally
and most recently he was shortlisted for the ZEISS Photography Award.

The winning series “Whiteout” was taken in the
Balkans, Scandinavia and Central Asia, remote areas where people often live in
isolation and in close contact with nature. Buyckx explains: “There is
a peculiar transformation of nature when winter comes, when snow and ice start
to dominate the landscape and when humans and animals have to deal with the
extreme weather. The series investigates this struggle against disappearance.”

PROFESSIONAL CATEGORY WINNERS
AND FINALISTS

An expert panel of
international judges was challenged to find the best photography series
(between 5-10 images) across the ten Professional categories. The winning and
finalist photographers are:

o Architecture winner: Dongni, China

2nd –
Julien Chatelin, France / 3rd – Diego Mayon, Italy

o Conceptual winner – Sabine Cattaneo, Switzerland

2nd –
Gao Peng, China / 3rd – Alexander Anufriev, Russian Federation

o Contemporary Issues winner – Tasneem Alsultan,
Saudi Arabia

2nd – Li
Sony, China / 3rd – Lorzenzo Maccotta, Italy

o Current Affairs & News winner – Alessio
Romenzi, Italy

2nd –
Joe Raedle, United States / 3rd – Ivor Prickett, Ireland

o   Daily Life winner: Sandra Hoyn, Germany

2nd –
Christina Simons, Iceland / 3rd – Alice Cannara Malan, Italy

o Landscape winner: Frederik Buyckx, Belgium

2nd –
Kurt Tong, United Kingdom / 3rd – Peter Franck, Landscape

o   Natural World winner: Will Burrard-Lucas, United
Kingdom

2nd –
Ami Vitale, United States / 3rd – Christian Vizl, Mexico

o   Portraiture winner: George Mayer, Russian
Federation

2nd –
Romina Ressia, Argentina / 3rd – Ren shi Chen, China

o Still Life winner: Henry
Agudelo    , Columbia

2nd –
Shinya Masuda, Japan / 3rd – Christoffer Askman, Denmark

o Sport winner: Yuan Peng, China

2nd –
Eduard Korniyenko, Russian Federation / 3rd – Jason O’Brien,
Australia

OPEN PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR – ALEXANDER VINOGRADOV, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

“Mathilda” by Russian photographer Alexander
Vinogradov was selected as the best single photograph in the world and awarded
the photographer $5,000 (USD) along with the Open Photographer of the Year
title.

Vinogradov is an amateur photographer based in
Moscow and his winning image is a portrait of a young girl, inspired by the
French movie ‘Léon’.  The
photograph was selected from ten Open category winners announced on 28 March by
a panel of judges led by British journalist and photographer Damien Demolder.

YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
– KATELYN WANG, US

Sixteen-year-old student
Katelyn Wang from Los Angeles, California received the Youth Photographer of
the Year title. Open to those aged 12-19, the Youth competition asked
photographers worldwide to respond to the brief of ‘Beauty’ with a single
image.

Wang’s winning photograph “On
Top of the World” was taken while standing above Lake Pehoé in
Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park, and beautifully captures
the landscape beneath her. 

STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE
YEAR – MICHELLE DAIANA GENTILE, ARGENTINA

Michelle Daiana Gentile, aged 21, of Escuela de FotografíaMotivarte, won the Student
Photographer of the Year title with a stunning series called “Only Hope”. 
Responding to the brief of “Emotions”, Gentile delivered a powerful series shot
across ten days spent with workers of an old paper factory in Argentina. 

Gentile received €30,000 worth
of Sony photography equipment for her university at the awards ceremony.

OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO
PHOTOGRAPHY – MARTIN PARR

British photographer Martin
Parr was honored with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize at the
awards ceremony.  He was recognized for his unique visual language and for
pushing the boundaries of the medium.

The Outstanding Contribution to
Photography prize has previously been awarded to Mary Ellen Mark, William
Eggleston, Eve Arnold, Bruce Davidson, Marc Riboud, William Klein, RongRong
& inri, Elliott Erwitt and Phil Stern.

SONY WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS & MARTIN PARR
– 2017 EXHIBITION AND BOOK

All the winning and shortlisted images will be
exhibited at Somerset House, London from 21 April – 7 May. The
exhibition will also include a specially curated exhibition of rarely seen
black and white images from Martin Parr’s early career alongside some of his
most iconic work, books and films. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the
winning and selected shortlisted works, available to buy from www.worldphoto.org.