• Zed Nelson receives prestigious Photographer of the Year title
• Susan Meiselas honoured as the 2025 Outstanding Contribution to Photography
• 10 Professional category winners additionally announced
• Exhibition opens at London’s Somerset House from 17 April – 5 May
(Dubai, United Arab Emirates,20 April 2025) – The Sony World Photography Awards announced today the overall winners of its 18th edition at a special gala ceremony in London, bringing together leading figures in the industry to honour this year’s winners and their achievements.
The prestigious Photographer of the Year 2025 title was awarded to the acclaimed British photographer Zed Nelson for the series The Anthropocene Illusion. Nelson receives a $25,000 (USD) cash prize, a range of Sony digital imaging equipment, and the opportunity to present an additional body of work at the Sony World Photography Awards 2026 exhibition.
Nelson was selected from the 10 Professional competition category winners, who were announced at today’s ceremony, alongside the 2nd and 3rd place finalists in each category. The evening’s programme additionally recognised the overall winners of the Awards’ Open, Student and Youth competitions. Also honoured during the course of the evening was this year’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography recipient, the acclaimed documentary photographer Susan Meiselas.
Over almost two decades, the Awards have become a definitive annual moment for the discovery and celebration of contemporary photography. Each year the Awards celebrate the stories and images that shape our visual language and capture the imagination, offering a global perspective on this ever-evolving medium. The Sony World Photography Awards 2025 exhibition is on display at Somerset House, London from 17 April – 5 May, presenting over 300 prints and hundreds of images in digital displays, as well as a special presentation by Susan Meiselas.
PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
The Anthropocene Illusion is a long-term documentary project, spanning six years and four continents, which explores the deeply fractured relationship between humans and the natural world. Taking the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’, a term for the current period in Earth’s history which is characterised by humans being the dominant influence on the environment, Nelson’s series focuses on humanity’s response to its impact on the planet. The project looks at artificial spaces, created by humans as a means to ‘experience’ and interact with nature, from safari parks, nature reserves and resorts, to natural history museums, zoos and green cities. Nelson uses these constructions as a lens through which to explore the dissonance between the human desire to stay connected to nature, and the continuous environmental destruction caused by human activity.
Commenting on Zed Nelson’s winning project, Monica Allende, Chair of the 2025 Professional jury says: ‘The jury applauded Nelson’s urgent topic and his ability to translate complex environmental issues into striking visual narratives. The Anthropocene Illusion illustrates a world where the boundaries between the real and the artificial blur, where the wild survives in controlled enclosures, and where human nostalgia for nature is expressed through spectacle rather than action. Nelson’s work compels viewers to question their own role in this paradox and consider the consequences of a society increasingly distanced from the natural world. This timely body of work tells one of the most important stories of our age, and is now more critical than ever.’
PROFESSIONAL CATEGORY WINNERS
The winning series in the 2025 Professional competition have been selected by a panel of expert judges. Each of the winning photographers displays an original approach to narrative and exceptional technical ability.
As part of their prize this year, for the first time the Professional category winners were invited to attend Insights, a day of specialised sessions with industry experts in London. Drawn from leading institutional and commercial photography spaces, the expert speakers offered the winners their insights on ways to continue expanding their platforms and growing their reach. All of the category winners additionally receive Sony digital imaging equipment. To learn more about this year’s Professional winners and finalists, please visit worldphoto.org.
This year’s winners are:
ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
WINNER: Ulana Switucha (Canada) for The Tokyo Toilet Project
Finalists: 2nd place Andre Tezza (Brazil); 3rd place Owen Davies (United Kingdom)
CREATIVE
WINNER: Rhiannon Adam (United Kingdom) for Rhi-Entry
Finalists: 2nd place Irina Shkoda (Ukraine); 3rd place Julio Etchart & Holly Birtles (United Kingdom)
DOCUMENTARY PROJECTS
WINNER: Toby Binder (Germany) for Divided Youth of Belfast
Finalists: 2nd place Florence Goupil (Peru); 3rd place Alex Bex (France)
ENVIRONMENT
WINNER: Nicolás Garrido Huguet (Peru) for Alquimia Textil
Finalists: 2nd place Maria Portaluppi (Ecuador); 3rd place Cristóbal Olivares (Chile)
LANDSCAPE
WINNER: Seido Kino (Japan) for The Strata of Time
Finalists: 2nd place Lalo de Almeida (Brazil), 3rd place Mischa Lluch (Spain)
PERSPECTIVES
WINNER: Laura Pannack (United Kingdom) for The Journey Home from School
Finalists: 2nd place Giovanni Capriotti (Italy); 3rd place Valentin Valette (France)
PORTRAITURE
WINNER: Gui Christ (Brazil) for M’kumba
Finalists: 2nd place Raúl Belinchón (Spain); 3rd place Tom Franks (United Kingdom)
SPORT
WINNER: Chantal Pinzi (Italy) for Shred the Patriarchy
Finalists: 2nd place Michael Dunn (Bolivia); 3rd place Antonio López Díaz (Spain)
STILL LIFE
WINNER: Peter Franck (Germany) for Still Waiting
Finalists: 2nd place KM Asad (Bangladesh); 3rd place Alessandro Gandolfi (Italy)
WILDLIFE & NATURE
WINNER: Zed Nelson (United Kingdom) for The Anthropocene Illusion
Finalists: 2nd place Pascal Beaudenon (France); 3rd place Kevin Shi (United States)
OPEN PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
The Open competition celebrates the power and dynamism of a single photograph. Winning photographs are selected for their ability to distil a singular moment and evoke a broader narrative. The Open Photographer of the Year 2025 is Olivier Unia (France), who receives a $5000 (USD) cash prize and Sony digital imaging equipment.
Olivier Unia was chosen from the 10 Open category winners for his photograph Tbourida La Chute, which captures the danger and excitement of the moment a rider is thrown from their mount during a tbourida, a traditional Moroccan equestrian performance.
Commenting on his win, Olivier Unia says: ‘I’m very proud to be the Open Photographer of the Year in this major competition. It gives me the confidence to continue to share my work. I entered Tbourida La Chute, one of the photographs from a project I’ve been working on for the past two years about the Moroccan equestrian art form of tbourida, and I am pleased to see this image recognised.’
STUDENT PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
The brief for this year’s Student competition was In the Beginning. Students of photography from leading institutions across the world were invited to enter a series documenting the beginning stages of a story. The Student Photographer of the Year 2025 is Micaela Valdivia Medina (Peru), from the Instituto Profesional Arcos in Chile. Micaela Valdivia Medina’s project, The Last Day We Saw the Mountains and the Sea, focuses on female prison spaces across Chile, and the dynamics that shape the lives of incarcerated women and their families.
Commenting on her win, Micaela Valdivia Medina says: ‘To be a winner in the Sony World Photography Awards is very important to me, but also to all the women I worked with for this project. To talk about and photograph prison spaces is never easy, but it is necessary to keep making and sharing these images. As a student, I appreciate this opportunity and recognition. At this time when photography and arts education is in decline, I think it’s important that students, teachers and professional photographers unite to protect it.’
YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR
For the 2025 Youth competition, photographers aged 19 and under were invited to respond to an Open Call and enter their best images from the last year. The Youth Photographer of the Year 2025, chosen from a shortlist of 11 photographers, is Daniel Dian-Ji Wu (Taiwan, 16 years old) for his arresting image of a skateboarder doing a trick, silhouetted against a sunset in Venice Beach, Los Angeles.
Commenting on his win, Daniel Dian-Ji Wu says: ‘It’s an incredible honour to be named Youth Photographer of the Year. I feel beyond excited and grateful. Photography has been a huge part of my life for the past seven years, so this means so much to me—not just as recognition, but as a reminder of why I love what I do. It opens doors to new opportunities and connections, which makes the journey ahead even more meaningful. I’m really thankful to the Sony World Photography Awards for selecting me and can’t wait to see what’s next.’
OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO PHOTOGRAPHY
The prestigious Outstanding Contribution to Photography 2025 is awarded to acclaimed documentary photographer Susan Meiselas. Known for her collaborative approach to portraiture, and for shedding light on lesser-known narratives, Meiselas’ work has been instrumental in shaping contemporary documentary practices, and the conversation around participation in photography.
More than 60 images by Meiselas, including excerpts from some of her landmark series, are on view at Somerset House as part of the Sony World Photography Awards exhibition, showing some of the key themes and narrative trajectories of the past five decades of her practice.
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