Aerial images highlighting fight to protect the Amazon win photo award

Sony World Photography Awards 2020 Photographers

Pablo Albarenga, Guofei Li, Luca Locatelli, Craig McGowan, Caroline Paux, Florian Ruiz

HUMANITY and nature lie side by side in these shots by Pablo Albarenga. They are part of Seeds of Resistance, a series documenting threatened environments and those battling to protect them. They earned Albarenga the Sony World Photographer of the Year prize at the World Photography Organisation’s Sony World Photography Awards 2020.

The series uses aerial images of its subjects, alongside shots of their environments from a much higher altitude. Albarenga says he wants to raise awareness of the killing of indigenous people in the Amazon. In 2017, at least 201 indigenous leaders and activists were killed while protecting communities from projects that threaten their land, according to pressure group Global Witness.

Other entries include this photo of a pair of cheetahs cleaning each other by Guofei Li, the open natural world and wildlife category winner. Florian Ruiz’s shot of Lop Nor – a dried salt lake where nuclear weapons were tested – in China’s Xinjiang province was a professional landscape category finalist, while Craig McGowan’s image of an iceberg in Northeast Greenland National Park won the open landscape category.

Caroline Paux’s photo of gulls fighting over a starfish was shortlisted in the open natural world and wildlife category, and Luca Locatelli’s image of high-tech farming was a professional environment category finalist.