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Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

The World Photo Organization has released the shortlist for this year’s Sony World Photography Awards, the so-called “world’s most diverse photography competition.” The shortlist covers all four competitions—Professional, Open, Youth, and Student Focus—and a total of 20 categories in all.

This year, the Sony World Photography Awards received nearly 320,000 entries from over 200 countries, and the 200 shortlisted images—the top 10 in every category—represent the best of those 320,000. The judges also selected a top 50 per category to create a “commended” list. The overall winners in each category, as well as the coveted Photographer of the Year award, will be revealed on April 19th, and a specially curated exhibition is slated to run from April 20th – May 6th at Somerset House in London.

The 30 images in this slideshow represent “highlights” selected from various categories of the Professional and Open competition shortlists. Scroll through for a little dose of Wednesday inspiration, and let us know what you think in the comments.

To learn more about the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards, or if you would like to see all of the shortlisted images for yourself, visit the World Photography Organization website.

Press Release

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Nick Dolding, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Open, Portraiture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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The stylish Emile shot for Paypal looking suitably aloof and hoity in a set with just a little nod towards Wes Anderson.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Manuel Armenis, Germany, Shortlist, Open, Street Photography (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Hamburg, Germany. Spring of 2017. The most graceful lady of her neighborhood, despite the burden of old age. Always stylish, colorful, in good spirits, smiling, never complaining, even though the everyday is a struggle and a challenge for her. And never to be seen without her best friend – her little dog.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Xiaoxiao Liu, China, Shortlist, Open, Culture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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In China, new senior middle school students would have their military training at the beginning of the first year’s school term. We all have memories during everybody’s training time. I helped a school to shoot for the record of their training time in September 2017.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Manish Mamtani, India, Shortlist, Open, Travel (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Aerial view of Glacial river in Iceland. While crossing the bridge, I noticed some pattern in the water and wondered how it would look from the sky. I stopped the car at a turnout after crossing the bridge and flew my drone to capture this image. I included the bridge and the car to give an idea of the scale. This river flows to the ocean and becomes part of the sea.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Sphiwo Hlatshwayo, South Africa, Shortlist, Open, Portraiture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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A portrait of a woman with freckles taken earlier in 2017. This image was taken in studio using two soft lights (softness altered in post production). This image was taken because I simply found the model to be beautiful. She caught my eye at an event and I had to bring her into the studio so I could capture every single freckle on her face.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Mark Edward Harris, United States of America, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Eyes Are the Window to the Soul

Image Description: A 40 year old orangutan named Azy at the Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. Some orangutans have lived into their early 60s.

Series Description: Photographic and scientific studies of a group of orangutans at the Simon Skjodt International Orangutan Center in Indianapolis, Indiana demonstrate the individuality of each primate as well as a clear awareness of self. There is obviously a sentient being looking back through the lens. Orangutans and humans share 97 percent of their DNA sequence.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Rasmus Flindt Pedersen, Denmark, Shortlist, Professional, Current Affairs & News (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Mosul liberated

Image Description: An elderly woman is driven through the city on the back of one of Golden Division’s Humvees. The temperature is nearly 50 degrees celcius, and she’s too weak to get away from the frontline on her own. 11 days later – 10. July 2017 – the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, declares Mosul liberated, although fighting continues in the city for a couple of weeks.

Series Description: On the 16th of October 2016, a coalition of Iraqi and Kurdish military forces launch operation ‘We are coming, Nineveh’ – the fight to retake the Iraqi city Mosul and the surrounding area from ISIS. Nine months later Mosul is declared liberated. An AP report estimates that upwards of 11,000 civilians have been killed during the war, and according to the International Organisation for Migration more than 800,000 people have fled their home. The series is shot over the course of 16 days during two separate trips to Mosul, Iraq in January/February 2017 and June/July 2017 in order to document the war to liberate Mosul from ISIS.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Asha Miles, Russian Federation, Shortlist, Professional, Current Affairs & News (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Scars

Image Description: I do not remember anything about the ceremony of circumcision, I was not even a year old. About what it did to me, I only found out when I was older. I remember that I was so upset and offended by my mother, when I found out, that I did not talk to her for a very long time. I already knew by then that it was bad. We were told about this in school. I’m glad that today the operation is banned.&nbsp;<br>
I myself could not do without the consequences – my stomach often hurts, and the doctor says that maybe it’s because of circumcision. But I was lucky compared to my younger sister – she was constantly experiencing pain during urination and did not go to school for months. Everything was so bad that Mama herself decided not to do the operation to my other sisters.

Series Description: Female Genital Mutilation, or Female Circumcision, is the partial or complete removal of external female genitalia. “Scars” are personal stories of 12 Gambian women who survived the procedure as children. For several years, Gambia has been actively spreading information about the harm of female circumcision, which was once considered part of a cultural tradition designed to reduce a woman’s sexual desire and keep her clean before the wedding. According to recent statistics, 76% of the country’s women were subjected to the procedure. Officially, the procedure has been banned since 2015, but continues to be carried out secretly to this day. There are very few cases of prosecution, also with the change of power this year, many people think that the old laws are no longer valid. Whether this ritual will become a thing of the past, depends on the consciousness of women and their attitude to this issue.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Edgar Martins, Portugal, Shortlist, Professional, Discovery (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes

Image Description: A woman has sparked a backlash after she took a picture of a dead man in his coffin then posted it on Facebook. The unnamed woman took a sheet off the body of Michael Dene Ray, 21, at a funeral parlour. She then put a friendship bracelet – identi- cal to the one she and another person were wear- ing – on his wrist and took a picture of their arms next to one another. The woman then put the image on Facebook as a ‘tribute’ to him. It has since been taken down after Michael Dene’s family learned that friends were planning to wear a T-shirt featur- ing the offending image at a party to celebrate his birthday. Now the man’s family has reacted with anger and want tighter controls at funeral parlours. Michael Dene died on 21 December last year and a coroner later ruled his death was as a result of suicide. The family has started a petition calling for it to be made illegal to take pictures in funeral homes without the consent of the next of kin.</p>

Adapted from ‘Mourner took picture of dead man in his coffin for Facebook’ by Richard Hartley-Parkinson in www.metro.co.uk, 13 June 2016

Series Description: Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes which began to take shape during the course of research carried out at the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (INMLCF), in Portugal. Over a period of three years, Edgar Martins took more than a thousand photographs and scanned more than three thousand negatives from the INML’s vast and extraordinary collection. A significant number of these images depict forensic evidence, such as suicide notes, letters and other objects used in suicides and crimes as well as inherent in the work of the pathologist. However, alongside these photographs, Edgar Martins also began to recover images from his own archive and produce new photographs on other subjects, intended as a visual, narrative and conceptual counterpoint. The project sits precisely within this counterpoint between images, imaginations and imagery relating to death and the dead body, as an interstitial realm, an interlude, between art and non-art, between past and present, between reality and fiction. Edgar Martins’ decision to work in the National Institute of Legal Medicine stems from his interest in highlighting the historic and symbolic role of one of the places that, in the context of modernity, institutionalised – through scientific practice and judicial discourse – the representation, analysis and scrutiny of death and the dead body. In this sense, the incursion of a photographic artist into a place so charged with scientific character (medical, judicial, ideological) necessarily calls on epistemological, psychological and semantic questioning: e.g. what distinguishes a documental image of a corpse or a crime scene from an image that reproduces the staged creation of a mental image of a corpse or a crime scene? What effect do these differences have in the viewer’s imagination? How do the retrospective and prospective horizons appear in the face of these different types of image? In this way, by productively linking documental and factual records (pertaining to real cases and meeting the scientific and operational requirements of the INMLCF) with images that seek to explore their speculative and fictional potential, Siloquies and Soliloquies on Death, Life and Other Interludes proposes to scrutinise the tensions and contradictions inherent in the representation and imagination of death, in particular violent death, and, correlatively, the decisive but deeply paradoxical role that photography – with its epistemological, aesthetic and ethical implications – has played in its perception and intelligibility.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Eduardo Castaldo, Italy, Shortlist, Professional, Creative (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Check Point 300; (in)human borders

Series Description: Every day, before sunset, thousands Palestinian workers spend between 2 and 4 hrs clumped together to cross the so-called “CheckPoint 300”, that divides Bethlehem and Jerusalem, in order to go working in Jerusalem and surrounding areas. The images presented are realized with instants taken from more than 30 different pictures realized at CheckPoint 300, and the purpose of the series is to represent the inhuman conditions in which these people are forced daily to get their right for a job. If these images are result of a creative composition, hence not real, what is real is the sense of oppression that they aim to represent.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Varun Thota, India, Shortlist, Professional, Landscape (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: We live in a symmetrical world

Image Description: Taken at the outskirts of Hong Kong, this large residential area is supposed to resemble North American type suburbs, with individual homes and even yellow school buses. However, this large lake in the center of it all may have been designed a particular way, which can only truly be recognized from above.

Series Description: Our world from above, is beautifully symmetrical, whether it be the highways we drive on, the neighborhoods we live in, the high rises we build or the parks we play in. Shot with a drone through my latest travels to Guangzhou, London, Macau and Hong Kong, aerial photography has taken photography to new heights, allowing me to see world through a whole new perspective.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Jack Yong, Malaysia, Shortlist, Professional, Discovery (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: SPACE PROJECT 2088

Image Description: Thermal Vacuum Test Area

Series Description: Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar, the first Malaysian individual who traveled to space made a statement that resonated with me until today was; “I looked out through the tiny window – and there it was, the unmistakable third rock from the Sun we call Earth, floating in the inky darkness of space. It was more beautiful that I could have imagined. My heart felt like it had stopped beating and my eyes didn’t even blink. I just looked in awe, amazed by the beauty of space. The moment was worth dying for.”

That statement did not only triggered my inner childhood dream to go space but refocus my thoughts on what it is to observe space beyond a spatio-temporal dimension of reality. My understanding of the celestial space lies above me, guided by the abundance of photographs captured using sophisticated satellites and astronomical machines.

As my fascination of traveling to space was dismissed by limitations, I’ve engaged a process of alternative vision that progressively shifted my periphery of view to a much familiar landscape and gravity – simultaneously re-channeling my focus to an epistemological foundation. By entering several space facilities in Malaysia, I’ve garnered photographs that remind us not just of the representation of these machines and landscapes as functional objects – but an extensive reinterpretation of “space” on Earth.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Tania Franco Klein, Mexico, Shortlist, Professional, Creative (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Our Life In The Shadows

Image Description: Mexico City, Mexico.

Series Description: Influenced by the pursuit of the American Dream lifestyle in the Western World and contemporary practices such as leisure, consumption, media overstimulation, eternal youth, and the psychological sequels they generate in our everyday private life.

The project seeks to evoke a mood of isolation, desperation, vanishing, and anxiety, through fragmented images, that exist both in a fictional way and a real one. Philosopher Byung-Chul Han says we live in an era of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform. We have left behind the immunological era, and now experience the neuronal era characterized by neuropsychiatric diseases such as depression, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, burnout syndrome and bipolar disorder.

My characters find themselves almost anonymous, melting in places, vanishing into them, constantly looking for any possibility of escape. They find themselves alone, desperate and exhausted. Constantly in an odd line between trying and feeling defeated.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Anush Babajanyan, Armenia, Shortlist, Professional, Portraiture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: The Twins of Koumassi

Image Description: Rasidatou and Latifatou, 4, pose for a portrait on a street in the Koumassi district of Abidjan, Ivory Coast on July 25, 2017.

It is a belief that is centuries old in Ivory Coast, and in several countries of West Africa, that twins have spiritual and mystical powers. When in need for a problem to be solved or for a positive change to happen, people often come to twins, donate to them and seek for a blessing, with the hope that the power of the twins will help their wishes come true.

Series Description: Mothers dress them in mirroring and often traditional outfits and bring them out and about the streets of central Abidjan, Ivory Coast. It is a belief that is centuries old here, and in several countries of West Africa, that twins have spiritual and mystical powers. When in need for a problem to be solved or for a positive change to happen, people often come to twins, donate to them and seek for a blessing, with the hope that the power of the twins will help their wishes come true.

In the district of Koumassi in Abidjan, the twins and their mothers are concentrated around the area of the Koumassi Grande Mosque, where visitors of this mosque can see them after their prayers. The twins of different ages spend most of their day in this area, with others’ trust in their spiritual powers supporting the children and their families.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Tomasz Pad?o, Poland, Shortlst, Professional, Landscape (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Greetings from Kazakhstan

Series Description: Series Description: Kazakhstan entered to the independence probably with the most damaged natural environment among the former federal states of the USSR. The excessive use of water from Syr Darya for irrigation of farmlands affected to the disappearance of the Aral Sea, plowing millions of hectares of chernozem, triggered wind erosion, which led to unprecedented degradation of soils, while the Semipalatinsk area became famous for nuclear tests and related contamination of the region.

For years, the authorities have been trying to change the negative image of Kazakhstan, promoting, among others things, its natural attractions. It takes a special form in Almaty, the former capital of the country, where many construction areas are decorated with sheets depicting landscapes of Kazakhstan. It creates a kind of dissonance with the perception of the country, as well as with the fact that actually Almaty is one of the most polluted cities in the world. Crumpled, dirty sheets say a little more about the country than the originators could have predicted.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Wiebke Haas, Germany, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Horsestyle

Image Description: Anton was tickled in the ear to shake his head. His thick mane looks like a hairpiece. Most of the time he held his his head close to the ground so it took a lot of time to manage this shot.

Series Description: When people ask me why I’m photographing horses I usually respond: “Because I adore their beauty and magnificent grace!” But there is another reason as well. Horses can be hilarious and darn funny!

It’s my greatest passion to tease out nearly human expressions of my horse models. It was really fun to work with such different horsy characters. The black PRE Allaus learned to shake on hand sign within 5 minutes before the photo session! Arabian stallion Hafid preferred to neigh proudly in studio first before he realized that 3 girls where absolutely euphoric when he shook his head.

The most difficult part was to keep the horses straight to the camera. Most time they wanted to move their head to the side or downward. A good handling and horse goodies were highest priority. I focused on a great face and a harmonic choreography of the hairs.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Luca Locatelli, Italy, Shortlist, Professional, Landscape (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: White Gold

Image Description: A view of Torano’s “marble valley” in the Apuan Alps, one of Italy’s most marble-rich area, where the abundance is surreal. What we admire as pristine white stone was born hundreds of millions of years ago in overwhelming darkness.

Countless generations of tiny creatures lived, died and drifted slowly to the bottom of a primordial sea, where their bodies were slowly compressed by gravity, layer upon layer, until eventually they all congealed and petrified into the interlocking white crystals we know as marble. Some eons later, tectonic jostling raised a great spine of mountains in southern Europe. Up went the ancient sea floor. In some places they rise more than 6,000 feet.

Series Description: Rarely has a material so inclined to stay put been wrenched so insistently out of place and carried so far from its source. In Italy’s most marble-rich area, known as the Apuan Alps, the abundance is surreal. Hundreds of quarries have operated there since the days of ancient Rome and Michelangelo sculptured most of his statues from this stone. Now the trade is booming due to the demand in Saudi Arabia and other gulf states.

The photographs of this area’s majestic quarries reveal their own isolated world: beautiful, bizarre and severe. It is a self-contained universe of white, simultaneously industrial and natural.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Sasha Maslov, Ukraine, Shortlist, Professional, Portraiture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Faces of World War II

Image Description: The first time I was injured was a year after I went underground. Five bullets in my foot. I was living in the forest with a few others, all young kids. We were busted in the forest by the NKVD, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs.

There were five of us and they fired at us. I got hit then, in my left foot. I wanted to blow myself up with a grenade so they wouldn’t take me alive, but once I realized I could still walk, I threw the grenade in the direction they were shooting from and ran with the others. They fired more shots, blindly, but didn’t hit anyone else and we were able to escape.

Series Description: Veterans is a series of portraits of people who took part in the Second World War – the one event in human history that could not be compared with any other event on the scale of catastrophe, human tragedy, and the degree of impact on the future of our civilization.

Every single person who participated in the war, whether they were a soldier or a general, prisoner or a guard, medical worker or an engineer, took part in shaping the image of the world as it is seen and perceived today. This project aims to look behind the emotional drape of each individual photographed. After 70 years after the war that took millions of lives, the photographer strives to to analyze and compare the lives of those who survived and are still living.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Lauren Greenfield, United States of America, Shortlist, Professional, Contemporary Issues (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Generation Wealth

Image Description: Ilona at home with her daughter, Michelle, 4, Moscow, 2012. Ilona’s sweater was produced for her in a custom color by her friend Andrey Artyomov, whose Walk of Shame fashion line is popular among the wives of oligarchs.

Series Description: Generation Wealth is my 25-year visual history of our growing obsession with wealth. Weaving 25 years of work into a meta-narrative, I have tried to explore a consumer appetite unprecedented in human history. Keeping up with the Joneses has become Keeping Up with the Kardashians as the “aspirational gap” between what we want and what we can afford has dramatically widened.

My journey starts in Los Angeles and spreads across America and beyond, as I endeavor to document how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture, and social status to every corner of the globe through photographs and interviews with students, single parents, and families overwhelmed by crushing debt, yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, and clothing. We visit homes and observe rituals of the international elite and the A-list celebrities from reality TV and social media, the same influencers who shape our desires and sense of self.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Ana Amado, Spain, Shortlist, Professional, Contemporary Issues (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Down Dance

Series Description: The series was a commission by Down Coruña, an association that works with young people with Down Syndrome. They wanted me to take photos of the boys and girls in relation to the building where they were developing their capacities, an awarded architecture by a Galician architect: the architecture as the witness of their gradual progress. But, besides, they asked me to take pictures that could tell another story about Down Syndrome.

We are used to think about them as limited people, about their discapacities, but we never consider that they can do a lot of things, specially things that everyone likes to do. I asked the people of the Association to tell me something they all love to do, and they said they are always listening to music and dancing. The series shows a group of young people having fun and dancing, like any other teenager.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Chloe Jafe, France, Shortlist, Professional, Contemporary Issues (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: ? ? ? ? ? Inochi Azukemasu

Series Description: This is a project I started 4 years ago about women in the Japanese mafia. I decided to gain access into the Yakuza organisation to try and find out what the women’s role is in this little-known organisation.

I tried to enter this underworld through different doors, from the nightlife in the red light district, to hostess bars. For a short period of time I even became a hostess myself in order to have a better understanding of their way of thinking and to respect their identity. After many months of trying to infiltrate the Yakuza, I had a fortuitous meeting, and was authorised by a boss to photograph the organisations daily life. This project is about my personal journey through this underworld.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Corentin Fohlen, France, Shortlist, Professional, Architecture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: MORNE A CABRI

Series Description: Lumane Casimir, in Haiti, is, an example of the cacophony and the problems that prevail the reconstruction in the country: lack of housing, corruption, vagueness in administrative management, disengagement from the state, ill-conceived and badly managed humanitarian projects, natural resources destroyed.

On this project of 3,000 houses, only half have been built. Each year I photographed this village to show how it had changed… or not. Story between 2012-2017.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Behnam Sahvi, Iran, Shortlist, Professional, Sport (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Magic of Water

Image Description: Pejman, 11 years old, takes a shower before the Disability Children Swimming Championships at the Disability Swimming pool in Tehran province , Iran.
09-08-2017

Series Description: Child Disability Swimming Championships at the Disability Swimming pool, Tehran Province, Iran

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Norbert Hartyanyi, Hungary, Shortlist, Professional, Sport (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Dancing In The Air

Image Description: Murilo Galves Marques – BRA

Series Description: The most spectacular part of the historical Hungarian sports event, the 17th FINA world championship is the high diving when competitors jump from an extreme hight: women jump from 20 meters, men from 27 meters. In case of the men, it means a 3 second free fall and carries huge risks of possible injuries, therefore competitors have to reach the water feet first, as their speed can reach 90 kms/hr.

Every time jumpers are watched by light divers in the water so that they can provide assistance in case of trouble. This was the first time in the history of world championships when competitors didn’t jump in natural water but in an artificially built pool. The pool at the foot of the 34-meter high, 10-ton tower was built in the Danube’s river bed on a 870 square meter concrete platform whose diameter is 15 meters with a 6 meters depth.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Krister Sørbø, Norway, Shortlist, Professional, Portraiture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Like owner, like dog

Series Description: How often have you not passed a dog and its owner on the street thinking “wow! No wonder those two found each other!” Well, I have, and wanted to document this phenomenon, and searching dog shows with a makeshift studio, I found the myth to be (partially) true.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Patricia Kühfuss, Germany, Shortlist, Professional, Creative (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: How to get home – South Africa’s 12th language

Image Description: Informal stands with sweets and vegetables can be found all over Soweto at the side of the road. Under Apartheid it was restricted how many and what kind of businesses black people were allowed to have. In the last twenty years more and more malls have been built in Soweto.

Show this sign at the side of the road and a taxi heading to Jabulani Mall/Soweto Theatre will stop.

All pictures have been set up together with hand model Siya Ndzonga.

Picture taken 01.05.2017 in Soweto, South Africa.

Series Description: Over twenty years after Apartheid ended, history still echoes through South Africa and the results filter down to everyday life of people living in the townships.
Today many black people still have to move up to 40 km every day into town to get to work, after their grandparents have been moved out of Johannesburg to the townships like Soweto to make the city center a white area. While the state’s infrastructure like the metrorail break under the amount of people and crime, private minibus taxis have become one of the booming economy branches in the country.

This series of set up photographs explores the unique hand signs used in Johannesburg to stop a taxi going in the right direction, which are also know as “South Africa’s 12th language,” referring to the fact that South Africa boasts 11 official languages. By making them blend into everyday situations of Soweto, they do not only tell the story of how to get home in Johannesburg, but also show what this home looks like.

Hand model: Siya Ndzonga

All directions are referring to travels to/from/in Soweto.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Fredrik Lerneryd, Sweden, Shortlist, Professional, Contemporary Issues (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: Slum ballet

Image Description: The boys and girls is practicing for an upcoming show, following teacher Mikes instruction

Series Description: Every Wednesday at Spurgeons Academy, a school in the middle of the indecipherable maze of Kibera’s narrow streets and alleys, students take the chairs and benches out of a classroom and sweep the floor. The school uniforms are switched to bright-coloured clothes.

When teacher Mike Wamaya enters the classroom, the students get into position and place one hand on the concrete wall as though it were a ballet bar. Classical music plays out of a small portable speaker, and the class begins.

The Ballet class is part of Annos Africa and One Fine Days charity activities in slum areas around Kenya. In Nairobi they work together with two schools in Kibera and one school in Mathare, another slum closer to the city centre. Dance is a way for the children to express themselves and it strengthens their confidence in life, and a belief that they can become something great.

Some of the children are now dancing several days a week in a studio called “Dance center Kenya” in a upper-class area of Nairobi and living in a boarding school, so thanks to their talent they have taken themselves away from the harsh conditions in the slum.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Andrew Quilty, Australia, Shortlist, Professional, Portraiture (Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: High Water

Image Description: Omid, who doesn’t know his age, stands for a portrait with his homemade skis in Aub Bala’s village mosque. Aub Bala, ‘High Water’, is the farthest village up the Fuladi Valley in central Afghanistan’s Bamiyan Province, so named because it is the closest to the source of the valley’s water, which comes off the mountains in snow-melt and rain, deeper in the valley, beyond where the single road reaches.

Series Description: Au Bala (means High Water in Dari language) is located in the Fuladi Valley, near Bamiyan, Afghanistan, March 2017.

I’d seen photos of the boys and their homemade skis; the rough-hewn planks matching the mottled skin on the faces of their makers.&nbsp; They were from Bamiyan in Afghanistan’s central highlands, famous for the giant Buddhas carved into an escarpment 1,500 years ago and destroyed by the Taliban just months before the United States led a military intervention to overthrow their regime in 2001.

The boys seemed only to appear for cameras at least when the “Afghan Ski Challenge”an annual cross-country race that attracts skiers from across the province and overseas, and which ran for the seventh year this Marc was held within skiing distance of their homes.

While many Afghans who’d compete had accumulated mismatched ski pants and jackets, boots and proper skis from donors, these boys wore mostly traditional Afghan clothes with regular shoes or plastic sandals.

I wanted to find the boys and photograph them with their wooden skis.

The first call I made before flying from the Afghan capital, Kabul, to Bamiyan, was to the manager of a hotel in the provincial capital. Abdullah proved not only to be an affable host, but an enthusiastic colleague, as well. Within a couple of hours of my arrival we’d met up with Alishah Farhang, a handsome, fit-looking 27-year-old in mirrored sunglasses on a nearby piste.

Farhang, it turned out, was one of Afghanistan’s top two skiers. He hopes to represent his country in the 2018 winter Olympics in the giant slalom. It would be a first for an Afghan. He suggested we venture west, beyond his village, as far as the road would take us into the remote Fuladi Valley.

Bamiyan is the safest province in Afghanistan, so, unlike most other parts of the country, where road movements—especially for foreigners—are done with caution, planning, often heavily armed escorts, and always white knuckles the drive, through villages of mud houses and silver poplars, was unusually pleasant.

Abdullah urged me to be patient as I eyed each passing village for young skiers. After an hour on the muddy road we finally came to a dead-end and the village of Au Bala, High Water, the farthest up the river that feeds the valleys potato crops.

As Abdullah parked, I spotted a silhouette making its way across a snow-covered paddock, straight-legged, scissoring along just like a cross-country skier. As the silhouette moved out of the direct sun, I made out a young boy, maybe ten, shuffling along on what looked like shortened fence palings.

We were in the right place.

It was 2009 when Au Bala first encountered skiing. A man and woman working for an international development organisation had travelled there in a quest to map the mountains of Bamiyan as part of an effort to attract tourists to the province.

The pair gave a demonstration on skis they’d brought along, and ever since, based on the shared memory of that day, and using lengths of timber with plastic strips nailed to the bottom; with nylon webbing, twine or even protruding nails for bindings, the boys of Au Bala have continued to build their own.

As we walked into the village we quickly collected a trail of young boys who pointed us toward the village’s only mosque, a gathering place even outside prayer times. We explained ourselves to a handful of elders who were soaking up the winter sun outside.

Within minutes Abdullah and I had been ushered inside a small anteroom where worshippers ordinarily leave their shoes during prayer. This, someone had decided, would be our studio.

The room quickly filled with young boys, a couple carrying clunky skis and wooden poles. At the demand of one older boy another dashed outside into a maze of alleyways in search of more skiers. Minutes later, five boys, all fumbling with homemade skis, were lined up along one side of the room.

Rarely does it all come together so easily in Afghanistan.

One by one I had each stand with their backs to the white-washed mud wall across the room from the low doorway. Sunlight poured through and made a trapezoid of light on the floor – it bounced up and lit the shadows beneath the boy’s eyes.

Afghans are wonderful portrait subjects; staring down the lens sternly, expressionlessly, but with pride. I spent less than two minutes with each: Baz Mohammad, Chirgh Ali, Bismillah, Ghodratullah and Omid. None knew exactly how old they were. And there were more, the boys said, but they were at school.

The following day we drove back to Au Bala at the same time. Eight more boys were waiting for us outside the mosque. Their skis were side-by-side, leaning against the wall, and the winter sun was melting the snow they’d collected on their last run.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Kaleb White, United States of America, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: The Roar

Series Description: The Roar is an intense occurrence of Red deer taken during the annual breeding season on the North island of New Zealand. I was commissioned to record the essence of stag (males) behavior during the peak roar. Stags are most vocal and have a very distinct roar sound when attracting hinds (females). Stags establish dominance during the roar by not only vocalizing their superiority but also displaying forms of mature postures and often fighting with competing stags to mate with hinds.

Being able to safely document large, antlered, wild, and aggressive stags has taken years of practice and patience. Witnessing intense, raw moments, for a brief time, ultimately provides a better understanding of red deer behavior; the essence of The Roar.

Sony World Photography Awards Shortlist

Photo © Neil Aldridge, South Africa, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

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Series Name: The Return of the Rhino

Image Description: A young white rhino waits in a boma, blindfolded and partially drugged after a long journey from South Africa, before being released into the wild in Botswana as part of efforts to rebuild Botswana’s lost rhino populations. Botswana is saving rhinos from poaching hotspots in neighbouring countries and translocating them to re-establish the populations of rhinos it lost to poaching by 1992.

Series Description: Rhinos are fighting for survival. Poachers are killing more than three every day to feed the demand for rhino horn in the Far East. All the while, the South African government is championing the consumptive use of rhinos and the legalisation of the trade in horn.

But there is hope. This is the story of how Botswana is leading the recovery of rhinos amidst a global poaching crisis by rescuing animals from poaching hotspots in neighbouring countries and translocating them to the Okavango Delta. Botswana is rebuilding the rhino populations it lost to poaching by the early 1990s and is creating an ark-like population capable of restocking parks and reserves that may have lost their rhinos to poaching.

To tell this story, I worked alongside the Rhino Conservation Botswana team, I visited rhino orphanages, I met poaching survivors and tracked with the incredible people working tirelessly to keep rhinos safe.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)