The most coveted award, Photographer of the Year, went to Craig Easton. The British documentary maker won with the series Bank Top, made in collaboration with the writer and scholar Abdul Aziz Hafiz, which examines how communities in the north of England are often misrepresented.
For a year, Easton and Hafiz worked closely with the residents of the Bank Top a neighborhood Blackburn to tell their stories through a series of black and white portraits accompanied by captions.
Their analysis revealed issues of social deprivation, housing, unemployment, immigration and representation, as well as the impact of past and present foreign policies. This project is a response to the simplifications and generalizations they have marked Blackburn as “Britain’s most segregated city”, with the aim of knowing the context that led to the formation of these local communities that have managed to become prosperous and cohesive despite the difficulties.
Speaking of the award, Easton said: “Photographer to learn, to try to understand, to document and share stories. It is a privilege to be able to do this by questioning perceptions and stereotypes, a theme that I believe to be particularly important ».
Restrictions linked to the global pandemic prevented the World Photography Organization from holding the usual awards ceremony in London, so the winners were announced with a virtual presentation in which the names of the first, second and third classified in the ten Professional categories (see gallery) and the winners of the Open, Student and Youth competitions were announced. For the 2021 edition, the four competitions in which the event is divided exceeded 330,000 applications, coming from 220 territories.
This year too, numerous awards for Italian photographers in the Professionals competition, which rewards works that have distinguished themselves for technical excellence and originality of perspective on contemporary issues.
The Documentary category was dominated by Italy. Vito Fusco won first prize with the series The Killing Daisy dedicated to pyrethrum, a lethal plant for insects that is at the center of a thriving natural insecticide industry in Kenya, while the third prize went to Lorenzo Tugnoli which documented the explosion of the Port of Beirut in August 2020, when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the city port, causing hundreds of deaths and the wounding and evacuation of thousands of people.
Simone Tramonte won in the category Atmosphere with the series Net-zero Transition which examines how Iceland currently can meet 100% of its energy needs from sources
renewables, has become a model of sustainability for other countries. In the category Creative Photography, Luigi Bussolati finished in second place with a work that retrieves the vintage photos of an uncle photographer and projects them on the landscapes of Parma and along the Po river.
Alessandro Pollio won the second prize in the category Still life with a series conceived during the first lockdown in Milan in which the photographer’s home environment is explored with compositions of food and everyday objects that trace the memory of the days spent in isolation. In the category Landscape, 2nd place went to Andrea Ferro with a series that examines the concepts of iconography and devotion in the political propaganda posters that dominate the urban landscape of Tripoli.
Tamary Kudita (Zimbabwe) was proclaimed Open Photographer of the Year 2021 thanks to the powerful portrait African Victorian which portrays a young black woman wearing a Victorian dress and holding traditional Shona kitchen utensils in her hand. The photo explores the stereotypical body image of black women, offering an alternative visual language with which to present the many facets of African identity.
Coenraad Heinz Torlage (South Africa) is it Student Photographer of the Year 2021 with Y seriesoung Farmers which portrays young South African farmers addressing severe droughts, security issues, land ownership debates, but also their contribution to achieving a more equitable future in terms of sustainability and food security.
The nineteen year old Indian Pubarun Basu was awarded the title of Youth Photographer of the Year 2021 with the photo No Escape from Reality in which the shadows of the railings projected on the curtains look like bars of a cage from which two hands appear trying to escape. The illusion created by the darkness and the gestures of the hands recreate the feeling of being trapped, an experience shared by many people around the world in the last year.
L’Outstanding Contribution to Photography 2021 went to the Mexican artist this year Graciela Iturbide. Recognized as the most important living photographer in Latin America, she immortalizes with her works insights into Mexican daily life since the late 1970s and is known for her contribution to the visual identity of the country.
Photo on cover: © ️ Craig Easton, UK, Photographer of the Year, Professional competition, Portrait, Sony World Photography Awards 2021
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