The Sony World Photography Awards come to Joburg

More than 430,000 pictures have been submitted to the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards from greater than 200 nations and territories. That quantity is value sitting with for a second, not as a advertising statistic however as a sign of what the awards have turn into of their 20 years of existence: a worldwide barometer of the place images is, what it’s doing and what it’s able to. From August 15, Johannesburg will get to see a collection of the work that rose to the highest of that discipline.

Decisive Moment: Sony World Photography Awards opens on the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography in Forest Town, and runs till January 22 2027. It is the primary time the awards have been offered in South Africa, and the exhibition attracts from three consecutive years of profitable photographs beginning in 2024, throughout documentary, portraiture, wildlife, sport, panorama and artistic images. The breadth of material is the purpose. This is just not a thematically curated exhibition with a single argument to make. It is a survey of what photographers the world over selected to have a look at, and the way they selected to look.

The Sony World Photography Awards have, over 20 editions, constructed a file that extends past competitors. The Outstanding Contribution to Photography award, offered yearly to a determine of lasting affect, has gone to William Eggleston, Mary Ellen Mark, Martin Parr, Graciela Iturbide, Sebastião Salgado, Susan Meiselas and, most just lately, Joel Meyerowitz.

Running concurrently is New Eyes, an exhibition devoted to rising South African photographers and the inaugural presentation of the Roger Ballen Centre’s personal images award. The three photographers proven, DM Terblanche, Karabo Mooki and Zwelibanzi Zwane, have been chosen by a panel comprising Emilie Demon, Jabulani Dhlamini and Michelle Loukidis, every bringing experience throughout images, schooling and curatorship. Their work seems alongside the worldwide award winners, a deliberate curatorial determination that locations rising South African follow in direct dialog with among the most-recognised images produced wherever on the earth over the previous three years.

The mixture of the 2 exhibitions is what makes the programme on the Roger Ballen Centre so beneficial. Decisive Moment offers the worldwide context. New Eyes offers the native one. Between them, they make a case for Johannesburg as a metropolis the place that form of dialogue belongs.

“The exhibition gathers perspectives, stories, environments, cultures and artistic approaches from across the globe, and presents them in a city that is itself defined by complexity and diversity,” says Roger Ballen, founding father of the centre. “We believe this exhibition will offer something meaningful to every visitor.”

A public programme of talks, walkabouts, workshops and masterclasses will run alongside each exhibitions, with particulars up to date repeatedly by way of the centre’s web site and social channels.

The Decisive Moment: Sony World Photography Awards and New Eyes: The Roger Ballen Centre Photography Award exhibitions run from August 15 2026 to January 22 2027 on the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography.

The Roger Ballen Centre for Photography is open Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 4pm and Saturdays from 10am to 12pm. Admission is R50.

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