All About Photo has once again raised the bar with the 2025 AAP Magazine Awards #51: Colors, an issue that bursts with energy, creativity, and emotion. This year’s edition celebrates 25 photographers from around the world who’ve turned color into poetry — transforming pixels into feelings, and light into language.
Color, after all, isn’t just something we see — it’s something we feel. Science says it’s a play of light and wavelengths, but ask any photographer, and they’ll tell you it’s pure emotion. From the golden hues of dawn in the Sahara to the deep blues of Icelandic ice caves, color shapes how we experience the world. It evokes nostalgia, wonder, and sometimes, pure chaos — all wrapped in beauty.
The winners of this year’s Color Category prove that color photography is more than visual — it’s storytelling in its most vibrant form. Each frame captures something unique: the rush of a neon-lit street, the stillness of a misty landscape, the warmth of human connection, or the poetic dance of light and shadow.
Out of hundreds of incredible submissions, these 25 artists stood out for their originality, technical mastery, and emotional depth. They show us that color isn’t just decoration — it’s identity, culture, and voice. Whether through bold contrasts or quiet subtleties, each image invites us to slow down and feel again.
AAP Magazine’s Colors issue isn’t just about photography — it’s about celebrating life in full spectrum. These winners remind us that even in a world that often feels black and white, there’s always color waiting to be seen — if we just take the time to look.
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#1. 1st Place Winner: "Pastoral Peoples and Practices" by Trevor Cole, Ireland
"The Mundari veneer themselves with ash to protect their cows from insects. My series, Pastoral Peoples and Practices illustrates how many people are inextricably connected to their livestock and beasts of burden. The peoples of the Ilemi triangle (the Omo valley of Ethiopia, Central and Eastern Equatoria and Northern Kenya) are all pastoralists. Their bond with their livestock is inextricably connected to their environment and their subsistence farming systems have a small ecological footprint. This area is very vulnerable to climate change and the impacts of drought have desiccated their environments."
#2. 2nd Place Winner: "Colors of Resilience" by Laurin Strele. Austria
"In Aleppo, Abu Zakkour — known locally as The Yellow Man — has dressed exclusively in yellow since 1983. Against the backdrop of a city scarred by war, he has become a living symbol of endurance and individuality. His bright presence turns ordinary streets into a declaration of joy and resilience, a reminder that identity can be an act of resistance."
#3. 3rd Place Winner: "Colors of Resilience" by Abdelrahman Alkahlout, Palestine
"Displaced Palestinians perform a collective prayer over the rubble of a mosque destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza. Amid the devastation, the vivid colors of the scattered prayer rugs stand in stark contrast to the gray ruins, symbolizing resilience, unity, and unwavering faith in the face of genocide."
Merit Award Gallery
#4. "One Eyed Cat" by Benjamin Littler, United States
"This was shot during the height of the pandemic. I work as a bartender so I was among the first to be laid off. With endless free time and government money, I spent my days walking or riding my bike around the empty streets of Salt Lake City, UT making photographs. This was one of those mornings."
#5. "Nuit indienne" by Xavier Blondeau, France
"As night falls on Vârânasî, I wander alone through the narrow streets of this strange city. I let my feelings rise to the surface, as if in response to the mystery that emanates from this nocturnal atmosphere. I was already familiar with the muted, silent night – the deep imagination of an encounter with oneself. But here I discover a solitude shared with what seems to be a universal presence. The life hidden through the luminous windows calls out to me from deep within. I wander through the Indian night of Varanasi."
#6. "Telephone, Iowa" by Fabien Dendiével, France
"I took this photo in Iowa in January 2024. For two weeks, I travelled across the Midwest, enduring extreme weather conditions."
#7. "Somewhere In Between" by Mayowa Akande, Nigeria
"Somewhere In Between – A Portrait Series of Ladé: Navigating Migration, Identity, and the Edges of Belonging. This portrait series presents Ladé not as an individual subject, but as a vessel for a shared narrative — one that speaks to the layered realities of many African immigrants. It reflects the ongoing negotiation of identity, the weight of displacement, and the quiet resilience required to navigate constant movement: across borders and policies, between cultures and cities, and through shifting versions of self."
#8. "Numbers Don’t Lie" by Eric Davidove, United States
"No diamond, no dugout, no problem. In these photos, baseball uniforms appear where you least expect them. The mix of team spirit and urban moments blurs the boundary between play and reality."
#9. "Photo" by Vitaly Golovatyuk, Russia
"With this series, I wanted to show my fascination of facade/interiors versus scale."
#10. "Faces of Ethiopia" by Erhan Coral, Turkey
"In a small Ethiopian town, a man stands by a turquoise wall, his straw hat and colorful glasses reflecting a quiet pride and individuality. Between color and shadow, fashion becomes a subtle act of self-expression amid the rhythms of everyday life."
#11. "Bizarre Branches" by Thaddäus Biberauer, Austria
"I don’t plan series in advance. They emerge naturally over time as I notice patterns or emotional threads between certain images. A single photograph may belong to more than one series if it resonates with different aspects of my work. What excites me most is just being in the process with my camera and watching how images start to relate to each other without planning it."
#12. "Colors of Life" by Neşe Arı, Turkey
"Life in Varanasi begins in the early hours of the morning. People gather at the sacred Ganges River to perform their rituals. The riverbank is always bustling and vibrant; along the ghats, one can see people bathing, praying, and washing their clothes. In this frame, life flowing through the colorful laundry stretching toward the sky tells the viewer the endless stories of Varanasi’s people."
#13. "Spiritual Liberation" by Thibault Gerbaldi, France/USA
"Sadhus embody spiritual renunciation amid the city’s vibrant chaos. Draped in saffron robes, they meditate and perform rituals by the Ganges, navigating narrow alleys, bustling ghats, and cremation grounds. In this sacred city, where life and death intertwine, their presence reflects a timeless quest for transcendence."
#14. "Brocade" by Oana Daian, Romania
"Beneath our feet, natural vegetal fabrics, in the vibrant colors of autumn, sewn with silver thread. Each vein, each edge, sparkles with delicate frost, transforming the garden floor into a tapestry of warm and cold colors. The scene captures the moment when autumn meets the first signs of winter."
#15. "Retaguardia" by Jesús Umbría Brito, Spain
"Retaguardia is a photographic project that dwells in the edges of mass society, in the periphery of the normative, in its penumbra. Far removed from dogma and convention, it unfolds a portrait of post-pandemic youth identified with the counterculture surrounding punk music and aesthetics: a mosaic of faces and expressions that seek each other in the mirror of the past to shape their present. From there, the author weaves a dialogue between times and generations."
#16. "Toxic River" by Olivier Jarry-Lacombe, France
"In this region of southern Spain, the waters of the Rio Tinto, near the copper mines, are laden with heavy metals. They take on incredible colors when seen from the sky, incredible but evil colors… – Rio Tinto, Andalusia."
#17. "It Matters" by Jan Janssen, Netherlands
"Antanas, the man in the photo, let me into his world, a home with less luxury, but everything counts. That morning, I was invited to participate in a food parcel campaign organized by MAX Netherland. His calm demeanor, the tranquility of the surroundings, the red cloth. They are symbols of dignity in a world that seems hopeless to many. The power of connection lies not in possessions, but in the small details of our existence. And I felt the pain. Not for what I saw, but for what we often choose not to see. Perhaps happiness begins with appreciating the ordinary."
#18. "The Garden of My Tenderness" by Oksana Omelchuk, Ukraine
"In this series, I deliberately moved away from the familiar palette of floral hues to explore emotion through color rather than form. Each image was manually hand-painted in a digital environment, not as retouching, but as an act of painting, shaping light and shadow as if with a brush."
#19. "Crater" by Yuan Su, United States
"Indonesia is one of the most volcanic active countries in the world. When we visited, the volcano happened to be emitting smoke, and the morning light was beautiful, allowing us to capture this photograph."
#20. "Lingering Shaddows" by Nazanin Alipour Jeddi, Iran/USA
"The photography series Lingering Shadows is an attempt to capture the simple yet complex and hidden moments that women experience in their everyday lives. These images use the color blue to emphasize the often invisible fatigue—an endless cycle of tasks that, despite their importance, sometimes feel futile and unproductive. The dominant presence of blue conveys a deep sense of coldness and isolation."
#21. "Four Colours and One Movement" by Alejandra Nowiczewski, Argentina/Italy
"This image belongs to Four Colours and One Movement, a project that relates, through images, four colours to the transformative movement whereby each of them changes negative qualities into positive ones during meditation within the Buddhist tradition. In it, colour symbolism is frequently used to present abstract concepts through visual images."
#22. "Hands of Belonging" by Marijn Fidder, Netherlands
"At The Dorna Centre Home for Autism, Brass for Africa offers inclusive music lessons that provide children with autism and intellectual disabilities a place where they truly belong. In Uganda, where these children often face discrimination, music becomes a powerful tool for self-expression and connection."
#23. "The Girl in the Painting" by Anna Matysiak, Poland
"The inspiration for the photo were the works of the great artist René Magritte, who often used simple, realistic forms and placed them in strange situations. The title of the photo suggests that it shows a girl. But how do we know? Can we be sure? Is what we see always the same as what really is? The message of this photos is to encourage the viewer to reject obvious associations and think for a moment. Find the hidden meaning that is deep in our souls. Add our own ending to an unfinished story."
#24. "The Colors of the Night" by Simone Curzi, Italy
"In the heart of the constellation Eridanus, the blue light of Rigel reflects off interstellar dust, shaping one of the most fascinating nebulae in the winter sky — the Witch Head Nebula (IC 2118). This image, titled “The Witch’s Gaze”, was created to capture the subtle beauty of reflected starlight and the fragility of light traveling hundreds of years before reaching us."
#25. "Beholders" by Li Sun, China
"The key point of this Beholders project is to personify the surveillance camera. By using various color and posing them, those cameras’ imaginary roles, emotions and personalities are exposed to the audience. The surveillance camera is the city’s observer, but citizens who are observed seldom look the cameras face to face."