Growing up without role models can make it difficult to dream. Citlali Fabián's response was to create them — through collaboration, through portraiture, through embroidery stitched into photographs by her grandmother's hands. Named Photographer of the Year at the Sony World Photography Awards 2026, she is exactly the kind of artist this recognition was made for.

A disposable camera on a primary school field trip. A girl directing her classmates, choosing backgrounds with the instinct of someone who already knows. That was where it started for Melissa Schriek. The ODE series is her most personal statement yet — not a correction, not a polemic, just photography that looks at the world it actually sees.

He grew up with the sounds of the Sicilian sea and always carries his camera. His signature: the face you can almost see. NSIRIES — Alessio Maria Ciacio, Bologna — on instinct, mystery, and the feeling that opens the doors of imagination

She puts bells on her fingers because they fit like they were made for them. She puts sprouts behind her ear. A petal becomes an extension of the tongue. Maria Luneva, Moscow, 23 — on nature, transformation, and the adventure of finding beauty in the ordinary.

He spent years as a refugee before photography gave him a language. He covered the war against ISIL, developed PTSD, then turned the camera on his own community. Younes Mohammad — Open Wounds, Erbil, Iraq — on sensegraphy, the human cost of conflict, and why beauty must be allowed to breathe.

She photographs the thin line between reality and the unreal. Alena Kotzmannová asks one question, in every project: what happens when you try to reach the boundary of the possible?

He shoots Yosemite in infrared film. He photographed Burning Man sunrise parties. He once did a shoot in Joshua Tree involving snakes, heatstroke, four models and mushrooms. A reviewer called him "Ansel Adams on Acid." Marco Walker didn't disagree.

Copenhagen-born, New York–formed. Apprenticed under Mary Ellen Mark, documented a generation — Nina Mouritzen on the diary-like intimacy of portraiture, buskers in New Orleans, and why work and hanging out are always the same thing.