Sony World Photography Awards 2024

Enlightening exhibition at Somerset House to mark this year’s Sony World Photography Awards.

The commentary said that the curatorial approach for this year underscores photography's “power to document, represent and spotlight the richness of our collective experience” but, although there were some stunning images, I did find there was a heavy emphasis on environmental issues. I’d have liked a bit more variety.

While I am moaning, I’d also have liked to see larger labels. They often had a lot of complex information on them yet it was hard for more than one person at a time to read them.

To be more positive shout outs for me this year go to Valery Poshtarov, who had won the professional portrait prize for these pictures of fathers and sons holding hands from all over the world, Brent Stilton’s photos of LBGTQIA refugees from Uganda now in Kenya, Federico Scarchilli’s pictures of flowers with the pills they are used to make and Siobhan Doran’s pictures of old Philippine houses built with money from sugar.

This year’s outstanding contribution award had gone to Sebastiano Salgada and there were a number of rooms showing a retrospective of his work and new projects. These tended to be dystopian images of industries which were all too real. 

Closed 6 May 2024


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