The judges of the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards today honor the work of Anush Babajanyan, Armenian photographer by shortlisting the work as top ten in the world in the Awards’ Professional competition.
Produced by the World Photography Organisation, the Sony World Photography Awards is the world’s most diverse photography competition. The 11th edition saw a record breaking 320,000 submissions by photographers from more than 200 countries and territories, presenting some of the world’s finest contemporary photography captured over the past year. The international range of entries display a huge diversity of imagery in terms of genre, style and subject matter across the Awards’ 4 competitions: Professional, Open, Youth and Student Focus.
In the Professional competition, photographers are judged on a strong bodies of work between 5-10 images. Anush Babajanyan, a professional photographer from Yerevan, has been shortlisted in the for Culture category for her series The Twins of Koumassi, showing beautiful images of siblings dressed in traditional outfits and brought out and about the streets of central Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
On being shortlisted, Babajanyan said: “I am happy that through this award more people will be able to learn about this story, the phenomenon of twins in the Ivory Coast and the sad reality behind it that often happens. This recognition makes me believe even harder in the work that I do.”
Anush Babajanyan is a member of the VII Photo Agency, based in Armenia. Her work is focused on social narratives related to women and children, issues of minorities, and the aftermath of the conflict in Nagorno Karabakh, among others. In addition to working extensively in the Caucasus, she also continues to photograph in Turkey, the Middle East and West Africa.
Much of Anush Babajanyan’s recent activity has been dedicated to peace building processes between Armenia and Turkey. In 2016, she co-founded the #BridgingStories project that brought together young photographers from Turkey and Armenia, in an effort to bridge peace between the two nations. Anush is currently hand-making her first book, The House of Culture, about the memory of Soviet Armenian culture houses. Anush Babajanyan’s photography has been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, National Geographic, Foreign Policy Magazine, and various other international publications.
The work of the shortlisted and commended photographers will be exhibited at the Sony World Photography Awards 2018 Exhibition in London from April 20 – May 6. The Open competition winners will be announced March 20, and the overall and Professional category winners revealed April 19, 2018.
