The 2025 Sony World Photography Awards celebrated its 18th edition with a spectacular gala at London’s Somerset House, honoring outstanding talent from across the globe. Recognizing excellence in genres ranging from architecture and wildlife to portraiture and landscape, ten professional photographers were crowned category winners.
Each winner received state-of-the-art Sony digital imaging equipment and participated in "Insights," a day of talks and industry panels with fellow creatives and professionals. The evening also paid tribute to the evolving art of photography, spotlighting diverse visual storytelling through breathtaking, genre-defining imagery.
British photographer Zed Nelson was named Photographer of the Year for The Anthropocene Illusion, a deeply thought-provoking six-year documentary project exploring humanity’s manipulation of the natural world. His work will return in 2026 with a new series at next year’s exhibition. Other notable winners included Olivier Unia, whose dramatic photo of a traditional Moroccan equestrian performance earned him Open Photographer of the Year, and Micaela Vidivia Medina, recognized as Student Photographer of the Year for her powerful series documenting women in Chilean prisons.
The Youth Photographer of the Year, Daniel Dian-Ji Wu, impressed with a striking sunset silhouette of a skateboarder in Venice Beach. Celebrated documentary photographer Susan Meiselas was honored for her lifetime achievements with the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, her work exhibited alongside over 300 prints during the show’s April 17 to May 5 run.
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#1. Photographer of the Year: "The Anthropocene Illusion" by Zed Nelson
"In a tiny fraction of Earth’s history, humans have altered the world beyond anything it has experienced in tens of millions of years. Scientists are calling it a new epoch: The Anthropocene – the age of human. Future geologists will find evidence in the rock strata of an unprecedented human impact on our planet, from huge concentrations of plastics to the fallout from the burning of fossil fuels, and vast deposits of concrete used to build our cities."
#2. Open Photographer of the Year: Motion Category – "Tbourida La Chute" by Olivier Unia
"Many of the photographs taken during a traditional Moroccan ‘tbourida’ show the riders firing their rifles. With this image, the photographer wanted to share another side of the event, and show how dangerous it can be when a rider is thrown from their mount."
#3. Professional Category Winner: Architecture & Design – "The Tokyo Toilet Project" by Ulana Switucha
"The Tokyo Toilet Project is an urban redevelopment project in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan that involves the design and construction of modern public restrooms that encourages their use. The distinctive buildings are as much works of art as they are a public convenience. These images are part of a larger body of work documenting the architectural aesthetics of these structures in their urban environment."
#4. Professional Category Winner: Creative – "Rhi-Entry" by Rhiannon Adam
"Throughout history, 117 billion humans have gazed at the same moon, yet only 24 people – all American men – have seen its surface up close. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the artist discovered an application for the ultimate art residency: dearMoon. In 2018, Japanese billionaire and art collector Yusaku Maezawa announced a global search for eight artists to join him on a week-long lunar mission aboard SpaceX’s Starship – the first civilian mission to deep space."
#5. Professional Category Winner: Documentary Projects – "Divided Youth of Belfast" by Toby Binder
"If I had been born at the top of my street, behind the corrugated-iron border, I would have been British. Incredible to think. My whole idea of myself, the attachments made to a culture, heritage, religion, nationalism and politics are all an accident of birth. I was one street away from being born my “enemy.”’ Paul McVeigh, Belfast-born novelist."
#6. Professional Category Winner: Environment – "Alquimia Textil" by Nicolás Garrido Huguet
"Alquimia Textil is a collaborative project undertaken by Nicolás Garrido Huguet and researcher and fashion designer María Lucía Muñoz, which showcases the natural dyeing techniques practiced by the artisans of Pumaqwasin in Chinchero, Cusco, Peru. The project aims to bring visibility to, and help preserve, these ancestral dyeing practices, which demand many hours of meticulous work that is often underestimated within the textile sector."
#7. Professional Category Winner: Landscape – "The Strata of Time" by Seido Kino
"This project invites viewers to consider what it means for a country to grow, and the advantages and disadvantages linked to that growth, by overlaying archival photographs from the 1940s-60s within current scenes of the same location. Early in Japan’s period of rapid economic growth from 1945 to 1973, the trade-off for affluence was pollution in many parts of the country. As an island, its land and resource constraints also led to an uneven population distribution."
#8. Professional Category Winner: Perspectives – "The Journey Home From School" by Laura Pannack
"Making our way home from school is a simple, nostalgic, universal activity that we can all relate to. This project explores the tumultuous public lives of young people in the gang-governed Cape Flats area of Cape Town, South Africa, where their daily commute carries the risk of death."
#9. Professional Category Winner: Portraiture – "M’kumba" by Gui Christ
"M’kumba is an ongoing project that illustrates the resilience of Afro-Brazilian communities in the face of local religious intolerance. Its name derives from an ancient Kongo word for spiritual leaders, before it was distorted by local society to demean African religions. For more than 300 years, nearly 5 million African people were brought to Brazil."
#10. Professional Category Winner: Sport – "Shred the Patriarchy" by Chantal Pinzi
#11. Professional Category Winner: Still Life – "Still Waiting" by Peter Franck
" Still Waiting presents collages that capture moments of pause, of waiting. They depict the liminal space between events, a threshold where time seems to stretch, and meanings remain unfixed. The juxtaposition of objects within the space leaves room for interpretation, inviting surreal flights of thought. Everything is suspended, held in a fragile equilibrium where intervention feels imminent. Just fractions of a second away from some decisive action, the images linger in a fleeting moment of stillness, a breath before the world moves again."
#12. Student Photographer of the Year – "The Last Day We Saw the Mountains and the Sea" by Micaela Valdivia Medina
"This project explores the complexity of female prison spaces and the people who inhabit them, from the inmates to their families. The series consists of photographs of the architecture of the prisons, the neighbourhoods they are in, and the dynamics at the visitor and family member entrances. This project was carried out at the women's penitentiary centres of San Miguel, San Joaquín and Valparaíso, between the months of March and July 2024."
#13. Youth Photographer of the Year – "Eclipse of Motion" by Daniel Dian-Ji Wu
"Daniel Dian-Ji Wu took this photo during summer break in 2024, at Venice Beach Skatepark in LA during golden hour. The photographer captured this image of a skater mid-air, silhouetted against the sunset, expressing the raw energy of that moment. He says this image ‘made me feel a sense of passion and freedom.’"
