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Federico Borella wins Photographer of the Year

Federico Borella has been named Photographer of the Year at the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards, winning the $25,000 prize for his series Five Degrees – a look at male suicide in the farming community of Tamil Nadu, Southern India, which is facing its worst drought in 140 years. The Italian photographer’s work takes its lead from a Berkeley University study, which found a correlation between climate change and increased suicide rates among Indian farmers, and explores the impact of both via images of the farming landscape, mementoes of the farmers, and portraits of their survivors.

“As global warming changes the face of life ever more rapidly – particularly in developing and underdeveloped nations – the work of artists such as Borella becomes ever more needed,” commented Mike Trow, chair of the professional jury. He added that this year’s submissions “provoked a lot of debate and interest amongst the jury” with works “pushing the boundaries of photography and challenging the perceptions and expectations the audience”. 

17 April 2019

Women dominate in the 2019 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards

The shortlists are out for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards and the result for the photobook prize is striking: this year, all three shortlisted books are by women, with Laia Abril’s On Abortion (Dewi Lewis Publishing), Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph, and Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness by Zanele Muholi (Aperture) all making the grade.

But says chair of the Kraszna-Krausz, Brian Pomeroy, that fact shouldn’t stand out as remarkable. “We’ve had female winners before,” he says. “It just shows talent is equally distributed, and you wouldn’t expect anything else. There have been very strong female photographers since the beginning of photography, I don’t think it’s something new.”

Liz Jobey, associate editor of the FT Weekend Magazine and a member of the photobook jury along with Chrystel Lebas, photographer and Kraszna-Krausz Book Award Winner 2018, and Anne McNeill, director of the Impressions Gallery, agrees, adding that the jury wasn’t deliberately looking out for books by women. But, she says, it’s an interesting time in which photography – and society and culture more generally – is opening up to other perspectives, and that was naturally reflected in this year’s shortlist.

16 April 2019

ICP/GOST First Photobook Award

The inaugural award calls for entries from unpublished photographers, with the winning work to be edited, designed, and distributed by the ICP/GOST imprint, along with an exhibition at ICP’s new space in New York

15 April 2019

Collective Strategies

London College of Communication and pic.london launch a public programme of workshops for recent graduates that puts collaboration at the fore

12 April 2019

World Press Photo of the Year winner John Moore

“Throughout my decade of coverage, the goal has always been to humanise this complex issue of immigration,” says John Moore, who’s nominated image from June 2018, Crying Girl on the Border, became a symbol of the families pulled apart by Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

12 April 2019

World Press Story of the Year winner Pieter Ten Hoopen

“I think that today, we need to be able to tell stories in differently, to be able to connect to as many viewers as we can,” says World Press Story of the Year-nominated Pieter Ten Hoopen. “We’re heading towards a new phase. Before, a single image could become iconic for a whole war, or a situation of despair. Now it’s different, and I think we need to be able to tell stories in a more sensitive way.”

Hoopen’s nominated photographs for World Press Story of the Year follow the movement of thousands of Central American migrants who joined a caravan heading to the United States border between October and November 2018. It is estimated that over 7,000 people – at least 2,300 of them children – joined the trek, making it the largest caravan of migrants in recent history, according to UN agencies.

12 April 2019

John Moore and Pieter Ten Hoopen win at World Press Photo

“Ideally a [World Press Photo] Picture of the Year would be surprising, unique, relevant, memorable,” says Whitney C. Johnson, vice president, Visuals and Immersive Experiences, at National Geographic, and jury chair for World Press Photo’s 2019 contest.

This year John Moore has won that top spot, with an image showing Honduran toddler Yanela Sanchez crying as she and her mother, Sandra Sanchez, were taken into custody by US border officials in McAllen, Texas, USA, on 12 June 2018.

This year World Press Photo also added a Story of the Year to its awards, and that prize has also been won by a project on immigration, which was shot by Sweden-based, Dutch photographer Pieter Ten Hoppen. His series shows people travelling with the largest migrant caravan in recent history, which left San Pedro Sula, Honduras on 12 October and gathered as many as 7000 people on its way to the USA, according to UN agencies – including at least 2300 children. Shot in soft colours, it focuses in on individuals in the caravan, and moments of beauty in their lives.

11 April 2019

Meet the experts: Offspring Photo Meet returns

Offspring Photomeet will return to Space Studios in Hackney for its sixth annual portfolio review on 7th and 8th June, offering one-on-one sessions with experts from leading galleries and publications, as well as panel discussions with Chloe Dewe Mathews, Alba Zari, and Ramon Pez.

Participants can discuss their portfolio during a choice of either four or eight 20 minute slots with their chosen experts, and the chance of winning the Best Portfolio Award. Reviewers taking part include The Guardian’s Caroline Hunter, Kate Edwards, and Fiona Shields; Save the Children’s Nina Raingold and Ivy Lahon; Mother’s Julie Thymann; and BJP’s Simon Bainbridge and Diane Smyth. Prizes include an exhibition at The Print Space in Shoreditch, as well as a feature in the Royal Photographic Society’s printed journal.

5 April 2019

Sony World Photography Award shortlists announced

“The photographers we have selected who are part of the exhibition are the vanguard – they are the next generation,” says Brendan Embser, managing editor of Aperture. He’s talking about the professional finalists in this year’s Sony World Photography Awards, which he helped judge alongside three other photography experts: Emma Lewis, assistant curator, Tate; Liu Heung Shing, founder of the Shanghai Center of Photography; and Isabella van Marle, head of artist & gallery relations at Unseen Amsterdam.

The Sony World Photography Awards are divided into four categories – professional, student, youth, and open – which this year received over 326,000 submissions from 195 countries and territories. The shortlisted work will go on show at the 2019 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition at Somerset House, London, before going on tour around the world; this exhibition will also include a section dedicated to work by Nadav Kander, who has been awarded a prize for his Outstanding Contribution to Photography.

29 March 2019