The World Photography Organisation is delighted to reveal the finalists and shortlisted photographers in the Professional competition for the Sony World Photography Awards 2023. Now in its 16th year, the Awards’ Professional competition rewards exceptional series of work both for technical skill and an original approach to storytelling.

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The winner of Photographer of the Year 2023 is chosen from the Professional finalists and announced on 13 April. A selection of images by finalists and shortlisted photographers will be exhibited as part of the Sony World Photography Awards at Somerset House from 14 April-1 May 2023.

Over 415,000 images from over 200 countries and territories were submitted to the Sony World Photography Awards 2023 and over 180,000 were entered into the Professional competition - the highest number of entries on record.

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CREATIVE

In The Right to Play, Lee-Ann Olwage (South Africa) explores female empowerment through education, using flower collage techniques to add a sense of joy, playfulness and hope to her portraits. In Africa Blues, Edoardo Delille and Giulia Piermartiri (Italy), use a projector to overlay images of environmental devastation onto scenes of everyday life as a way of highlighting the impact of climate change in Mozambique. Meanwhile, in Noemi Comi’s (Italy) Lupus Hominarius archive imagery is juxtaposed with bright tones to explore historic folk tales of Werewolves in Calabria, Italy, where the legend was sometimes used to keep women close to home.

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DOCUMENTARY PROJECTS

In Gaza struggles to accommodate the living and the dead as the population grows, Mohammed Salem (Palestinian Territory) follows a family compelled by overcrowding in the Gaza area to set up shelter and live in a cemetery. In The Women’s Peace Movement in Congo Hugh Kinsella Cunningham (United Kingdom) seeks to shed light on the frequently overlooked contributions of local women to the ongoing peace efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Tariq Zaidi’s (United Kingdom) Inside the Hamar Weyne Fish Market: the Heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, vividly captures the energy and atmosphere of the city's busiest fish market, where it remains a key source of economic activity despite the ongoing civil war.

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ENVIRONMENT

Charting the gradual demise of the Colorado River, Jonas Kakó’s (Germany) The Dying River explores the ways in which extensive human interference has impacted surrounding communities and their way of life. Miruku by Marisol Mendez (Bolivia) and Federico Kaplan (Argentina), focuses on the intersection of climate vulnerability and gender inequality through a series of images of an indigenous community from La Guajira in Colombia, experiencing a devastating water shortage. Elsewhere, in Green Dystopia Axel Javier Sulzbacher (Germany) investigates the burden and violent toll of the rising demand for avocadoes in Michoacan, Mexico.

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LANDSCAPE

Taken over a course of 76 solo flights and 200 hours in the air, Event Horizon by Kacper Kowalski (Poland) is a series of strikingly abstract ice patterns over bodies of water in Poland in winter. In Postcards from Afghanistan after forty years of war Bruno Zanzottera (Italy) captures the scars borne by the landscape of Afghanistan. Fabio Bucciarelli’s (Italy) Loss and Damage is a study of the destruction caused by four years of consecutive flooding in South Sudan, depicted in images of buildings and vehicles half-submerged by the floodwaters.

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