2016 Sony World Photography Awards: Italian Photography

The World Photography Organisation is a centre point for global photography initiatives.

The Sony World Photography Awards is the world’s largest photography competition.

The aim of the awards is to recognise and reward the best photography in the world. The ninth edition took place in London (22 April – 8 May 20016).

The Sony World Photography Awards has four competitions (Professional, Open, youth and Student Focus).

Each year the Sony World Photography Awards recognises a person / people whose contribution to the photographic industry.

Let’s see the best Italian photographers works:

The Roma are a distinct ethnic minority originating from Northwestern India and living all over Europe and America. Their total population has recently been esteemed to be more than 14 millions. They usually form a separate social group, only partially integrated into the societies and countries where they live. A history of discrimination, persecution and killings ” culminating with the Nazi holocaust ” has pushed the Roma and other related minorities (Sinti etc.) to the margins of society, making them one of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged minorities in Europe. Many Roma continue to face widespread racism and discrimination and to get limited access to basic rights and services and are almost unrepresented in public and political life. As a result, poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, lack of formal education, substandard housing are commonplace among them. From Mostar to Sarajevo, Roma people live in the outskirts of cities in labyrinthic villages consisting of shacks or small houses and keep more faithful to ancient traditions than more nomadic groups who moved to the West and got influenced by richer and consumeristic societies.
Valerio Bispuri
© Valerio Bispuri, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Candid, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Perspective and human presence are the most important things in a image, not always is possible to have both In this image I left my photocamera on the tripod with the remote control that activated the shot every 30 seconds after a initial delay of 10 minutes. In ten minutes I went to the opposite side of the lake to search the right one rock for have a human presence in the image.The perspective makes the rest. I appear very big near the huge Brenta mountains and the moon. The highest and biggest peak is Brenta peak in this image, near Madonna di Campiglio in Trentino, north Italy.
Stefano Guerrini
© Stefano Guerrini, Italy, Shortlisted, Open Competition, Panoramic, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Four centimeters of mightyness that moves slowly and unrelentless on a tree, while the moon rises on the background. The rhinoceros beetle is a nocturnal insect, during the day they stay safe under the cortex of the trees and with the summer they become very active flying at dusk to find a mate.
Simona Tedesco
© Simona Tedesco, Italy, Shortlisted, Open Competition, Nature and Wild Life, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Daana, 16, is a guest of Kongelai rescue centre. When she was 6, she escaped home to avoid FGM. Despite the fact that her mother helped her to escape, she said, she is not able to go back to her community since she’s considered impure. She lives in the centre and she is continuing her studies. Kongelai. West Pokot, Kenya. 2015-10-02
Simona Ghizzoni
© Simona Ghizzoni, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Contemporary Issues, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Mary Naikan Reuben is a member of the Kongelai Women’s Network, a group of women who are fighting to eradicate FGM in their community. In the local church, Mary shows to the male public a picture of a woman suffering from fistula, one of most severe consequence of FGM, in an attempt to raise awarness. Kongelai. West Pokot. Kenya. 2015-10-03
Simona Ghizzoni
© Simona Ghizzoni, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Contemporary Issues, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Maurizio Casula
© Maurizio Casula, Italy, Shortlisted, Open Competition, Panoramic, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Fatmata Kamara, 25, with her son Koday, 1. She has lost her husband and her aunt. She contracted ebola together with her son. They both survived the infection thanks to the cures given by Emergency. They live in Waterloo, a village developed from a refugee camp, heavely stroke by ebola in December 2014.
Marcello Bonfanti
© Marcello Bonfanti, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Portraiture, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Monjama Moussa, 25, married mother of 4 children, from Goderich. She had a coal shop and she contracted ebola from a supplier. After being treated by Emergency, she got back home, but she was refused by her family, that considered her healing as a sign of deamon possession. She has lost her family and her job. She now works as cleaner at the .Emergency surgical hospital in Goderich.
Marcello Bonfanti
© Marcello Bonfanti, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Portraiture, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Luca Laghetti
© Luca Laghetti, Italy,Shortlisted, Open Competition, Enhanced, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Bekaa Valley, LEBANON. 2015.Girls and children working in the fields.
Laura Aggio Caldon
© Laura Aggio Caldon, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Contemporary Issues, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

A personal account of photographer Jean-Marc Caimi of the city of Tokyo. From depicting the daily life in the parks and in the street, to the night life in Shinjuku, bringing the intimacy of people in search of their vital space. Hints of a nation suffering from an economic and social stagnation, scared by what the future might bring, struck by environmental catastrophes. A city surprisingly fragile and vulnerable.
Jean Marc Caimi
© Jean Marc Caimi, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Daily Life, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Tides -Phaeleh
Giorgio Granata
© Giorgio Granata, Italy, Shortlisted, Youth Competition, Environment, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Showgirl, during her performance in ocean drive
Miami Beach.A showgirl, during her performance in ocean drive
Giancarlo Ceraudo
© Giancarlo Ceraudo, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Candid, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Sirya.Kobane.15.6.15.Funerals of the five victims of a car bomb attack near Tal Abyad. The ISIS attacked two ambulances that were recovering the wounded, killing two doctors, two soldiers, and a patient.
Gabriele Micalizzi
© Gabriele Micalizzi, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Current Affairs, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

This series of portraits is taken from a personal investigation about immigration in Italy. These photos depict some refugees temporarily hosted in an immigration shelter, more precisely in a school gym of a town in the North of Italy. Thanks to the solidarity and passion of a group of volunteers and citizens who welcomed and took care about these fifty migrants for nearly two months, the place has become a well-known and helpful example of integration and humanity. However, after that positive experience, the migrants had to move to other locations in order to free the place where they had been put up, as school had to start again. These pictures were taken the night before the members of that multi-ethnic family were divided again and sent to other destinations, without any certainty about their future.
Francesco Fratto
© Francesco Fratto, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , People, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Once a year Italian families make tomato sauce at home, cooking and canning a huge amount of vegetables. Tons of tomatoes are grown in the fields of the South of the Country and harvested by about 19,000 laborers, paid 1 or 2 euro for each filled box. Only in 2015 there were 13 deaths at work in the fields because of high temperatures. Many of those involved in the harvest are immigrants. On the tomatoes, still dirty with soil, bought by my family to make the sauce, I saw the fingerprints of those who had harvested them, I imagined their stories, the hours spent in the sun, the hope, the desire to work. Since then, I haven’t watched the sauce with the same eyes.
Francesco Amorosino
© Francesco Amorosino, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Still Life, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Until the 60s, South Korea was almost a medieval country, poor and underdeveloped. After just 50 years, South Korea is now one of the most advanced countries in the world. The rush towards modernity has been fostered by imposing a huge sense of competition and a painstaking effort to reach scholastic, aesthetic and professional perfection. Youngsters grow up by keeping in mind the same ideals and future aims: get the best marks to get the best jobs. At the same time, the aesthetic models are totally conformed, obtained through a massive us of plastic surgery. The Country pushes the young generation towards an alienating standardization, the exact opposite of what happens in Western Countries, where success comes from one’s ability to emerge from the mass. The collateral effects of this rapid social, educational, economical, aesthetic and technological evolution” achieved through high competition and rivalry are psychological outbursts such as social isolation and stress that sometimes bring to alcoholism and suicide (South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world: 43 per day).
Filippo Venturi
© Filippo Venturi, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , People, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Surgical instruments
Daniele Robotti
© daniele robotti, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Still Life, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Picasso’s Women – Francoise Gilot was a French painter and best-selling author. She was a young painter when she met Picasso in 1944 and was his lover and muse until 1953. Picasso and Gilot never married, but they had two children together, Claude and Paloma. After spending ten years with the painter, she was the only one who, sick of Picasso’s relationships with other women, decided to leave him. She wrote the book “Life with Picasso”.
Cristina Vatielli
© Cristina Vatielli, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Staged, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Penguin chicks in Argentina are dying as a direct consequence of climate change, according to new research (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0085602). The picture shows the large colony of Magellan Penguins in Punta Tombo peninsula in Chubut Province, Argentina. The colony is the largest in South America and stay at the site until April, incubating their eggs, raising their chicks, and preparing for migration to south Brazil. Due to the effect of increased rainfall and temperature extreme which cause altered fish behaviour and make penguins nests similar to swimming pools the dead of the chicks has increased significantly in the last decades.
Christian Massari
© Christian Massari, Italy, Shortlisted, Open Competition, Nature and Wild Life, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

In the summer holidays at sea are a time of joy and fun for all ages. If we do not we looked at the different costumes, the scenes are the same as always. Sometimes the elderly back to be boys, parents make jokes to the children, often breaking social labels, creating new relationships. Stopping to look at the different behavior of people on a pier is hilarious and often allows you to freeze the moments in memory.
Andrea Rossato
© Andrea Rossato, Italy, Shortlist, Professional, Candid, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

This year, tourism in Sinai has suffered once again from the effects the troubles in the region: a russian plane crashed from a bomb explosion on the 31st of october 2015, killing 224 persons; Untill then, the russian tourists had became the essential part of the Sinai visitors, as tourism industry is hardly surviving since many years: Egypt has largely bet on the tourist industry (around 15% of the GDP), and for the Sinai region it is nearly all of the economy that is based on tourism. A risky bet, since as soon as political tensions occur, it is the entire region that is deeply affected.

A view of Mount Kazbek in Georgia..My family and I went to Georgia, Kazbegi on the last week of October for the half term break. We were staying at a beautiful hotel and I was just going to catch the elevator when I noticed this beautiful view from the window. I really wanted to take a photograph because in that frame you can see the positives and negatives of Mount Kazbek. For example you can see the amazing church on top of the mountain, but you can also see the poor town.
Anais Stupka
© Anais Stupka, Italy, Winner, Youth Competition, Environment, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards.

Lesvos, Greece Oct. 18, 2015. A mother and child wrapped in an emergency blanket after disembarking on the beach of Kayia, on the north of the Greek island of Lesvos.
Alessandro Penso
© Alessandro Penso, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Current Affairs, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

The Elefantentreffen it’s a winter motorcycle rally, which takes place on the first weekend in February or on the last weekend in January annually in the deeper of the Bavarian Forest, where snow is guaranteed and the temperatures are often below zero. No rooms and no facilities for bikers but only tents and straw. Each year almost 5,000 riders from all over Europe participate. Despite frost, snow, mud and all the difference of languages and countries all the motorcyclists spend three days round the campfire, drinking, making friends and helping themselves in situations of difficulty. In 2016 the Elefantentreffen will reach the 60th anniversary.
Alessandro D’Angelo
© Alessandro D’Angelo, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , People, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

In this project, Alberto Alicata, traces the history of photography, image iconic realized by the great masters, resorting to the use of a symbol of contemporary Western culture: Barbie. Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin, David Lachapelle, Mario Testino are some of the names which Alicata honors, studying carefully chosen shots and recreating a set to measure Barbie rebuilt in detail the limits of the obsessive precision, the original that inspired it, in order to strengthen the authenticity and strength of timeless images, now become part of our visual memory and intended to be timeless. Intuition playful operate this simulation, using one of the most imitated, idolized, collected and studied which is renewed in every historical period, this production puts in a dimension in the making, is intended to be enriched with new images, and more opportunity to quote unexpected suggestions.
Alberto Alicata
© Alberto Alicata, Italy, Shortlist, Professional , Staged, 2016 Sony World Photography Awards