The World Photography Organisation is a British company best known for its annual Sony World Photography Awards. The company was founded in 2007 by Scott Gray, and is now a subsidiary of Gray's art events company Creo.
The World Photography Organisation hosts a year-round portfolio of events including the Sony World Photography Awards, and Photofairs—art fairs dedicated to presenting fine art photography and moving image.
The company also creates, produces and delivers photographic events for a variety of partners, from exhibitions of individual artists, to platforms on the subject of photography involving artists, and curators from over 20 countries.
Sony World Photography Awards
Created by the World Photography Organisation, the Sony World Photography Awards are held annually. The awards are for photography from the past year and across a variety of photographic genres.
More than 1.5 million images from 200+ countries and territories have been entered to the awards since their inception.
Competitions, jury and academy The Sony World Photography Awards features four competitions:
Series (Previously Professional) – bodies of work across 10 categories Single Image (Previously Open) – the best single images across 10 categories Youth – work from young photographers aged 12 to 19 Student – work from photography students
The awards are judged annually by museum and gallery directors, curators, publishers, writers and artists. They are also supported by the World Photographic Academy.
Outstanding Contribution to Photography
Each year the Sony World Photography Awards honor one selected person / chosen people with its Outstanding Contribution to Photography prize. Past recipients of this prize include:
2008: Phil Stern 2009: Marc Riboud 2010: Eve Arnold 2011: Bruce Davidson 2012: William Klein 2013: William Eggleston 2014: Mary Ellen Mark 2015: Elliott Erwitt 2016: Rong Rong & inri 2017: Martin Parr 2018: Candida Höfer 2019: Nadav Kander 2020: Gerhard Steidl 2021: Graciela Iturbide 2022: Edward Burtynsky 2023: Rinko Kawauchi 2024: Sebastião Salgado 2025: Susan Meiselas 2026: Joel Meyerowitz
Photographer of the Year This is awarded to the overall winner. 2008: Vanessa Winship 2009: David Zimmerman 2010 Tomasso Ausili 2011: Alejandro Chaskielberg 2012: Mitch Dobrowner 2013: Andrea Gjestvang 2014: Sara Naomi Lewkowicz 2015: John Moore 2016: Asghar Khamseh 2017: Frederik Buyckx 2018: Alys Tomlinson 2019: Federico Borella 2020: Pablo Albarenga 2021: Craig Easton 2022: Adam Ferguson 2023: Edgar Martins 2024: Juliette Pavy 2025: Zed Nelson 2026: Citlali Fabián
Award ceremony, prizes and exhibition
The first Sony World Photography Awards ceremony was held in Cannes, subsequent ceremonies are annually held in London each April, and followed by an exhibition of the year's winning and shortlisted works at Somerset House in London. The artworks are then shown around the world as part of the Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition tour.
Winning photographers also share cash prizes, Sony digital imaging equipment, publication in the annual Sony World Photography Awards book. Overall and Series competition category winners are also flown to the London Awards ceremony.
Photofairs
The World Photography Organisation created the Photofairs brand in 2014. Its aim is to hold boutique events of traditional still photography through to large-scale installations, video works and the cutting edge of technology.
Overview Photofairs present fine art photography and moving image from galleries and their artists for collectors. There are also VIP and public programs.
Photofairs takes place annually Shanghai each September and has previously held two editions in San Francisco.
Zeiss Photography Award Launched in 2015, the Zeiss Photography Award was a collaboration between the World Photography Organisation and Zeiss.
The international photography contest annually invited photographers to submit bodies of work addressing a selected theme. All entries were free and the jury was specifically looking for artworks with a strong narrative. Winners received €12,000 worth of Zeiss lenses, €3,000 to cover travel costs for a photography project, an exhibition in London and the opportunity to work with Zeiss and the World Photography Organisation.
Past winners 2016: Tamina-Florentine Zuch, Germany 2017: Kevin Faingnaert, Belgium 2018: Nick Hannes, Belgium 2019 Rory Doyle, USA 2020: KyeongJun Yang, South Korea
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