The Photographer of the Year honors are awarded to the most outstanding photographers working in black and white

Photographer of the Year Contest

International Discovery of the Year

Timeless Lines explores the abstract beauty and quiet strength of the human form. Captured in stark monochrome, the light and shadow transform the contours of the body into landscape. Vulnerable and powerful, the image in all its simplicity and complexity, holds a kind of eternal presence.

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Timeless Lines

Dulcie May

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Discovery of the Year

Natural deposits become sculptural—formed by mineral-rich water and time, these textures blur the line between geology and abstraction. What seems carved is slowly grown.

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Calcium Forms

Haochen He

China

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Silver

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ABC Museum-Madrid-3822

Carlos Esguerra

United States of America

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Bronze

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Flutters

Karen Safer

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Shot from my balcony,one shot at a time till it aligned perfectly.

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Half Moon

OFarrell Andrew

United Arab Emirates

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Exit

People’s Vote Award

In Pieces, I Begin explores the fragmented self—torn between surface and interior, perception and truth. Through mirrored glances and layered forms, I trace the tension of becoming: not whole, but honest in dissonance. This is a portrait made of rupture, not resolution.

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In Pieces, I Begin

Tianya Fang

The Stillness Between explores the quiet spaces where form finds voice. Boats float in isolated composition, architectural silhouettes carve solitude, and winter trees stand as silent anchors—moments captured between motion and pause, where light, line, and stillness become their language.

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The Stillness Between

Dennis Maida

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From above, a camel caravan winds through the vast expanse of the Gobi Desert, the rising sun
casting elongated shadows on the nearby dunes. The journey is far from over, with miles of
sand stretching ahead in the early morning light.

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Shadows of the Gobi

Thibault Gerbaldi

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A capture of two locals deep in conversation, along the bank of a high altitude, salt flat lake, brings light to how we overlook the beauty of the planet we live amidst the race of the world, and our emotions.

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Therapy

Murtaza Chass

India

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A lone highway cuts through Iceland’s barren lava fields. A fleeting trace of movement in a static land of ice and fire. Silence. Stone. And the hum of distant engines. Ash meets asphalt. Light meets void.

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Ashphalt - Trails Through Ice and Fire

Oliver Callies

Germany

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Enclave, Chongqing

Old eaves cradle a rising tower in Chongqing—past and present aligned in silent symmetry.

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Framed Time

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The View They Left Behind

Zach Nelson

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Jersy Lily

Clint Whitmer

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I saw how the bird was waiting on the roof. I just had to find the right perspective and wait until it wanted to fly on again...

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Four Little Birds

Frédéric Muller

Switzerland

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"Oh my homeland, so beautiful but lost Oh remembrance so beloved, but so painful. Golden harp inspiring the great Poets. Why are you so silent and abandoning yourself to tears? Rekindle memories in our hearts. Tell us again about our glorious past!" Giuseppe Verdi inspires the Italian glory in decay

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"Va, pensiero" ("Go, thought" from "Nabucco")

Christian Basetti

Italy

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Steel and glass rise from the river’s edge.

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Vertical Shore

This series of four diptychs explores the profound connection between trees and the human body, revealing that separation is only an illusion. Through anthropomorphic interpretations, the works become an intimate study of belonging and the shared essence of nature and humanity.

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Bodyscapes

Nature expresses itself through curved lines; we construct straight lines. Trees teach us sensitivity, a fragility full of strength. Even when we perceive them only through their shadow over our world of cement and junk, we feel the delicacy they convey. Climate change is suffocating them. It hurts!

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The sensitivity of trees

Isabel Soares Dos Reis

Portugal

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