The Sony World Photography Awards 2008
The first Sony World Photography Awards were held on 21-25 April 2008 at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes.
The 2008 competition opened on October 7th and closed on 31st January. In those four months 70,286 images were entered from 12,294 photographers. The images entered came from a staggering 178 countries.
The awards were announced in a glittering ceremony in front of 850 guests from the world of photography, including Academy and Honorary Board members such as Elliott Erwitt, Bruce Davidson, Rankin, Nan Goldin, Martine Franck, Tom Stoddart, Martin Parr, Susan Meiselas, Stephen Cohen and many, many more.
Congratulations to all the winners and notably Vanessa Winship for winning l’iris d’or and Arup Ghosh for winning the best Amateur
All the finalists were exhibited in Cannes and the winners can be viewed here
WPA University Student competition
2008 also saw the first WPA University Student competition. The competition involved ten universities in ten countries across Europe. The 2 winning photographers from each university were flown to Cannes and given photographic assignments along with a series of seminars and masterclasses. The overall winner was IEFC (Institute D’estudis Fotografics de Catalunya) in Barcelona, Spain. IEFC receives 45,000 euros of photographic equipment for the university – courtesy of Sony.
The winning image can be viewed here
2008 Image Galleries:
All Images Courtesy of Robert Leslie www.leslieimage.com
