1839 Awards Reveal the 2025 Photographers Everyone Will Be Talking About

The 1839 Awards have revealed the winners of their 2025 Photographers of the Year, celebrating a remarkable roster of image-makers from 79 countries in their most global contest yet. The award honours photography’s rich history while spotlighting its future, and this year’s winning work spans intimate explorations of personal identity to expansive takes on social and environmental narratives.

The awards were judged by a world-class panel drawn from institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Phaidon, Vanity Fair, Artsy, and Christie’s. The winners embody photography’s power to challenge, connect, and inspire. Here are our favourites from the winners:

International Photographer of the Year

Jaime Travezan

Dream – Promotion for fashion designer Ade Bakare.

International Discovery of the Year

Li Tung
Embodied Syntax – Three nude figures interlock in silent cohesion, their headless forms blurring the boundary between human and construct. This composition invites a meditation on the body as language through consciousness, emotion, and memory persist.

GOLD CATEGORY WINNERS – Professional 

Street

Alexandru Măciucă
Oath to a Dream – “Oath to a Dream” is my Collection of Diptychs I’ve created over the years. Every Shot is Candid, Capturing Raw, Authentic Moments. I love pairing images that elevate and enhance one another, creating a deeper visual narrative. And sometimes just for pure visual aspect of it.

Still Life

Liz Obert
American Bodegónes – This body of work reflects on mortality, the human condition, and our culture’s obsession with materialism. Through imagery inspired by Dutch and Spanish paintings, it expresses the transience of our existence by exploring our shared relationship with food.

Macro

Panagiotis Dalagiorgos
Mushroom madness – A close-up backlit photo of an Ameles heldreichi nymph. I took this photo in December 2024 on a mountain near Athens, Greece. I found a pine cone with a mushroom growing on it, picked it up and placed in front of my lens, framing it with the sun in the background.

Film/Analog

Philip Coburn
ContactSheet, Aftermath Genocide Rwanda GOMA – I covered the genocide in Rwanda and the aftermath during my 1st foreign assignment in 1994. Images are from a camp called Kibumba near Zaire (now DRC) where many people had fled. Disease was rife. French troops stacked the dead into piles and covered them with soil due to the thin volcanic earth.

Conceptual

Nora Hegedus
Objects of Desire – Objects of Desire is a series dedicated to objects in the work of two major painters of the Surrealist movement, Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. It is an attempt to capture what struck me in their works and a declaration of love for the everyday objects I have always felt compelled to transform.

Architecture

Svetlana Fadeeva
Details – This photo was taken on the early morning on the grounds of the Qatar National Museum. I wanted to highlight the dynamic curves and bold colors to emphasize the architectural design’s movement and vibrancy.

Aerial

Yevhen Kostiuk
Photography of Overhead Liner’s Symmetry – P.O.O.L.S. – Photography of Overhead Liner’s Symmetry – offers a rare top-down view of cruise ships, highlighting their symmetry, clean geometry, and tiny bow pools. It’s not glossy marketing, but a visual study of design, structure, and detail often missed by passengers.

Storytelling

Mauro De Bettio
Venice of Africa – Makoko, a floating slum in Lagos with over 300,000 residents, lacks infrastructure, education, and healthcare. Despite poverty and no official recognition, its people show resilience and unity, turning hardship into strength and fostering a deep sense of community.

Landscapes

Michael Mihaljevich
An Arizona Moonrise – Arizona’s iconic saguaro cacti stand tall against a backdrop of post-sunset pastels. The monthly full moon lays watch over the serene Sonoran desert on a calm and colorful moment of dusk.

Travel

Steve Sorensen
WORKING THE SALT MINES – A LONE SOUL WORKING THE SALT MINES OF PERU. HAVING A HUMAN IMMERSED IN THIS LEVEL OF COLOR CAUGHT MY EYE.

Wildlife

Risto Raunio
Emperor family – Emperor parents are feeding their chick on the ice of Antarctica.

GOLD CATEGORY WINNERS – Discovery of the Year 

Abstract

Keith Gerard Bovair
IKEA Deconstructed

Aerial

Oleg Ilyin
Fairytale city

Domestic Animals

Jennifer Newitt
Cow Lick

Fashion & Beauty

Claudia Zeien

Carbon Copy – Vintage Dior dresses

Landscapes

Rolandas Urbonavicius
Le Mont – Saint – Michel. Foggy Morning – I aimed to capture Mont Saint Michel shrouded in morning mist and create a photograph that reflects its ethereal beauty. Using various filters, I added a surreal touch to the image, showing the subtleties of an early summer morning.

You can see all of the winning images on the award website.

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