PARTING SHOT | The World, framed

Every spring, just as London remembers what daylight looks like, Somerset House throws open its neoclassical doors and becomes the centre of the photographic universe. The Sony World Photography Awards return next April for their 19th edition, promising once again to show their audience the world as they’ve never seen it — or at least as they’ve never seen it through the particular lens of 419,000 hopeful entrants.

The painted backdrop of this chimpanzee enclosure at Shanghai Wild Animal Park in China is impressive in its artistry, but serves to provide a comforting illusion only to human observers. In their natural habitat in the forests of Central Africa, chimpanzees spend most of their days in the treetops. Being one of the most socially complex species among all non-human primates, chimpanzees in the wild live in societies ranging in size between 20 and 150 individuals. — Shanghai Wild Animal Park, Shanghai, China (Zed Nelson)

Established in 2007, the awards have grown into one of the most prestigious showcases of contemporary photography. They are the Oscars of the shutter, the Booker of the aperture, the one place where an image of a melting glacier, a Lagos street scene or a teenager’s existential boredom can be judged on equal footing.

Winner, Professional competition, Portraiture, Sony World Photography Awards 2025 — A portrait of Samara Azevedo representing the Yoruba deity of the seas, Yemanjá. She is the most popular Orixá in Brazil, but due to racism, her image has been altered. In Africa she is depicted as a corpulent black woman with large breasts to symbolise nurturing, but in Brazil her representation has been transformed into a slender white woman. Like Samara, many younger Afro-Brazilians are working to restore Yemanjá's original image and fight prejudice. Salvador, Brazil. (Gui Christ)

The judging panel this year is cosmopolitan and weighty. Monica Allende, a curator with a knack for turning visual storytelling into an art form in its own right, returns as chair for the third year running. She’s joined by an eclectic international team: Daniel Brena from Mexico, Yumi Goto from Japan, Zack Hatfield of Aperture in New York, Ghana’s Paul Ninson and London-based artist-curator Bindi Vora, among others. Between them they’ve edited, exhibited, published and theorised more photographs than most of us have in our iPhone galleries. Their task is to find not only the best pictures, but also the ones that say something definitive about this particular time in history.

Kenya’s national parks and reserves offer tourists the chance to see wild animals in what remains of their natural habitat. In Maasai Mara, tourists engage in colonial fantasies while re-enacting the romantic picnic scene in the film, Out of Africa. Local Maasai tribesmen are employed to add authenticity to the experience. While Kenyan national parks provide a sanctuary, the animals living within them are allowed to survive essentially for human entertainment and reassurance. These animals become, in effect, performers for tourists eager to see a nostalgic picture-book image of the natural world. — Photographer of the Year, Professional competition, Wildlife & Nature, Sony World Photography Awards 2025 (Zed Nelson)

The exhibition at Somerset House from April 17 to May 4 2026 will feature the winners and shortlisted works, along with presentations from last year’s Photographer of the Year, Zed Nelson, and this year’s still-to-be-announced recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography award. If past recipients — Sebastião Salgado, Susan Meiselas, William Eggleston — are anything to go by, expect to be impressed.

Winner, National Awards, Sony World Photography Awards 2025 — This image captures the essence of Icelandic natural landscapes: green and brown moss, water cascading down a canyon and a mountain covered in snow and fog. (Timo Zilz)

What makes the Sony Awards stand out is not just their scale but their philosophy: entry is free, judging is anonymous and the field is refreshingly democratic. Students, amateurs and seasoned professionals all line up in the same queue to be judged. Last year’s entries came from more than 200 countries. That makes the awards less a competition and more a census of what the world looks like when people feel compelled to press the shutter.

Daniel Dian-Ji Wu took this photo during summer break in 2024, at Venice Beach Skatepark in LA during golden hour. The photographer captured this image of a skater mid-air, silhouetted against the sunset, expressing the raw energy of that moment. He says this image ‘made me feel a sense of passion and freedom.’ (Daniel Dian-Ji Wu)

And while prizes are part of the draw — cash, Sony kit, solo shows — the real reward is exposure. Photographers live and die by measuring who sees their work, and to be hung in Somerset House and then in Berlin, Tokyo or Milan as part of the travelling exhibition, is to be seen on one of the most enviable of stages.

A kid is mesmerised by the hungry birds around him as a man feeds them on the water. (Victor Ribeiro,)

Photography is our most democratic art form: everyone carries a camera, everyone takes pictures. What the Sony World Photography Awards remind us is that not all images are equal. Some show us the news. Some show us our lives. And some — the best of them — show us ourselves, framed, lit and perfectly timed, so that we might see the world in a new way.