Five Indian Photographers Recognized In The 2018 Sony World Photography Awards - The World’s Most Diverse Photography Awards

· 5 Indian Photographers Recognized Across The 
Awards’ Shortlist And A Further 14 Placed Top 50 In The World

Indian photographers continue their dominance, as five photographers have been shortlisted for the world’s biggest photography competition - Sony World Photography Awards. The judges of the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards honoured the work of 19 Indian photographers by shortlisting and commending their photographs as the top 50 in the world in the Awards’ Professional, Open, and Student Focus competitions. 

The Sony World Photography Awards rewards and recognises the world’s best contemporary photography from the last year. The 11th edition saw a record breaking 320,000 submissions by photographers from more than 200 countries and territories, presenting some of the world’s finest contemporary photography captured over the past year.

The international range of entries display a huge diversity of imagery in terms of genre, style and subject matter across the Awards’ 4 competitions: Professional, Open, Youth and Student Focus. In the Professional competition, one Indian photographer has been recognized for a strong body of work between 5-10 images. The Open competition, which rewards the best single image across ten categories, features 3 Indian photographers on the shortlist. 

A further 14 from across India have been placed top 50 in the world (commended) across the ten categories of the Open competition. Lastly, the shortlist of Student Focus competition, for those studying photography features one student from an Indian university.

· Varun Thota,  for Landscapes Category from (Hong Kong, China)

· Kanishka Mukherji, for Enhanced Category from (Kolkata)

· Manish Mamtani, for Travel Category (born in Nagpur, lives in Peabody, USA)

· Swapnil Deshpande for Wildlife Category from (Alibag)

· Anshul Mehrotra for Dacumentary Cagegory from the University of Lucknow

The judges of the Sony World Photography Awards also commended the images of 14 photographers in the Awards’ Open competition, honoring them as the top 50 entries in their categories.

● Zeenath Shakir, Architecture, (Chennai)

● Mintu Deka, Architecture and Wildlife, (Hyderabad)

● Swapnil Deshpande, Architecture, (Alibag)

● Anujit Sarkar, Culture, (Indian nationality, lives in Helsingborg, Sweden)

● Paul Manjooran, Enhanced, (Indian nationality, lives in Muscat, Oman)

● Shreenivasan Manievannan, Enhanced, (Indian nationality, lives in Foster City, USA)

● Riyas Muhammed, Motion, (Indian nationality, lives in Dubai, UAE)

● Arvind Sharma, Portraiture, (Dehradun)

● Zulfikhar Ahmed, Portraiture, (Chennai)

● Ranajit Chatterjee, Street Photography, (India)

● Rajendra Mohan Pandey, Street Photography, (Kolkata)

● Jaydip Bhattacharya, Street Photography, (Kolkata)

● Chandrabhal Singh, Wildlife, (Pune)

● Sarang Naik, Wildlife, (Mumbai)

This year’s competition saw applications from universities worldwide. 10 shortlisted students will now go on to produce a further body of work, with the chance of winning €30,000 (Euros) of Sony digital imaging equipment for their university.

The work of the shortlisted and commended photographers will be exhibited at the Sony World Photography Awards 2018 Exhibition in London from April 20 - May 6. The Open competition winners will be announced March 20, and the overall and Professional category winners will be revealed on April 19, 2018.

New Delhi, March 05, 2018