Sony World Photography Awards 2025 holds a mirror up to an artificial natural world

This year saw over 420,000 entries into the Sony world Photography Awards, from 206 countries. The competition that has been running since 2007 has seen its biggest uptake and this years winners are a testament to its success.

Winners are divided into professional, open, student and youth sections, with multiple category winners in each section. Each of the winners is completely unique, ranging from collages to light-leaked film shots to answer the brief.

The overall winner though was British photographer Zed Nelson who also took the 1st place for the Wildlife and Nature category with his Anthropocene Illusion series of images.

Anthropocene is a term used to categorise the period of Earth's history that we're currently living in. One that is dominated by humanity and will be documented as one where fossil fuels were depleted and wildlife was endangered.

The series focuses on the artificial nature of the remaining natural areas, including national parks, safari parks and zoos, where the impression of natural habitat is given all for the enjoyment of us humans. One picture shows a champagne brunch in a wildlife reserve, while another shows tame lions licking water from a puddle.

Other great entries included Rhiannon Adam's Rhi-Entry project. Chosen as the only female for a commercial space mission to orbit the moon as an artist in residence, Rhiannon spent three years in training before the project was pulled. The images are a mixture of retro space reinacted and manipulated with pictures of the artist.

Canadian photographer, Ulana Switucha won the architecture category with a monochrome set of prints documenting Tokyo toilets that almost glowed in the dark.

Italian photographer Chantal Pinzi's beautiful portraits of Indian female skateboarders took the sport category, while Toby Binder's insight into the divided youth of inner Belfast won the documentary projects prize.

All the shortlisted images and winners are now on display at Somerset House in London until 5th May 2025. You can also see more at https://www.worldphoto.org/

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