The Photo Annual, one of the most prestigious industry contests, awards excellence in photo-based arts. This years’ submissions, from a time which will forever be remembered for the challenges and losses incurred during the global coronavirus pandemic, was marked by insightful, compassionate and thought-provoking submissions from photographers around the world. Themes of loss, home, loneliness and heritage were common throughout. We also received work that gave us glimpses of hope and profound joy.
We are pleased to present the best photography and multimedia of 2020, as judged by our distinguished panel of industry experts.
We want to thank every photographer and organization who created and submitted such powerful work this year amidst a time of unprecedented upheaval. Congratulations to each honoree for being part of this visual record, which features ad campaigns, editorial stories and news imagery, powerful personal projects, video and multimedia pieces, websites and self-promotion pieces and student work. Many thanks to the jury and our sponsors for continuing to allow these awards to be possible.
Photographer of the Year
Editor’s Choice Award
The Marty Forscher Awards
full gallery of winners
First place winners
See the First Place Winners
Northern Italy photographed during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
A portfolio of DJ portraits shot in Los Angeles and Las Vegas for Vanity Fair.
In January 2020, fleeing violence and poor economic conditions, Hondurans organized a massive migrant caravan that traveled through Guatemala into Mexico.
A series of photographs and interviews with five young LGBTQ+ couples.
The series “I Died 22 Times” looks at the way warfare is waged outside real battlefields.
United for Trump, but Split Over ICE Residents of O’Neill, a small rural town in Nebraska, are grappling with the fallout of 2018 immigration raids.
"A 56-page zine showcasing recent work that peeks into the lives of various people and animals."
A portrait series of twins in Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, home of the highest birthrate of twins in the world.
For Lincoln’s 80th Anniversary Continental Coach Doors Edition.
full gallery of winners
The Marty Forscher Awards
Editor’s Choice Award
Photographer of the Year
First place winners
Italian photographer Alex Majoli began his career at age 15, when he joined the F45 Studio in Ravenna, working alongside Daniele Casadio. While studying at the Art Institute in Ravenna, he joined the Grazia Neri Agency and traveled to Yugoslavia to document the conflict. He returned many times over the next few years, covering major events in Kosovo and Albania. His intimate portrayal of the closing of an asylum on the island of Leros, Greece, was the subject of his first book, Leros. Subsequent projects included, “Requiem in Samba,” “Hotel Marinum,” and a series of short films and documentaries. After becoming a full member of Magnum Photos in 2001, Majoli covered the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and two years later, the invasion of Iraq. He continues to document various conflicts worldwide for Newsweek, The New York Times Magazine, Granta and National Geographic. His project, “Libera Me,” is a reflection on the human condition.
THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR AWARD honors an image-maker who has created an outstanding image or body of work that reflects the year in photography. Congratulations to this year’s recipient, Alex Majoli, who will receive a $1,500 cash award.
Commissioned by Vanity Fair and published in the May 2020 issue, Alex Majoli photographed Northern Italy during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
full gallery of winners
The Marty Forscher Awards
Editor’s Choice Award
Photographer of the Year
First place winners
American-born, British-based artist, Jackie Nickerson, began photographing Zimbabwean farm workers in 1996 as a way to challenge the perception that those who work in African agriculture are disempowered, unmodern people. The resulting series, “Farm,” focuses on the unique and beautiful clothing the workers make for themselves, and by doing so highlights the worker’s identity, individuality, and ultimately, modernism. In her series, “Field Test,” Nickerson questions the lifestyle choices of the people of this world and reflects a contemporary reality in which the autonomous human subject is a compromised, problematic entity. Nickerson’s photo sculptures dismantle and reconstruct, protect and destroy the individual human being. In the series “Terrain,” Nickerson turned her attention to the roles workers play in the production and commodification of agricultural goods. “Terrain” highlights the synergy between cultivation, workers and the environment, and draws attention to debates about crop specialization, subsistence farming and food security. Her work has been exhibited at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; National Portrait Gallery, London; Mudam Musee d’Art Moderne, Luxembourg; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Sunderland Museum, UK; Harn Museum, Gainesville; Vatican Museums, Rome; Benaki Museum, Athens Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York.
EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD honors exceptional work by a winner of the Photo Annual Awards. Congratulations to this year’s recipient, Jackie Nickerson, who will receive a $1,500 cash award.
Northern Italy photographed during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Lupita Nyong’o photographed in New York City for Vanity Fair’s October 2019 cover story.
full gallery of winners
The Marty Forscher Awards
Editor’s Choice Award
Photographer of the Year
First place winners
Sponsored by Parsons School of Design and PHOTOPLUS these awards recognize one professional ($2,000 cash prize) and one student ($1,500 cash prize) who have made outstanding achievements in humanistic photography. The awards are given in memory of the sought-after camera-repair technician who helped equip Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark, Joel Meyerowitz and many other photographers.
In January 2020, fleeing violence and poor economic conditions, Hondurans organized a massive migrant caravan that traveled through Guatemala into Mexico.
Ada Trillo is a Philadelphia-based photographer, native to the Juarez-El Paso binational metroplex. Her work focuses on borders of inclusion and exclusion as they are experienced through people in forced prostitution, climate and violence-related international migration, and U.S. exclusions, resulting from long-standing borders of race and class. Using elements of documentary and fine art photography, Trillo attempts to bring attention to the impact that these borders have on exploited and marginalized people to amplify their voices. She uses photography as a platform to document our times by capturing both our most joyous and painful moments. Recently featured in The Guardian, she is the recipient of a Leeway Foundation Art and Change Grant, The Center For Emerging Visual Artists Fellowship, and Fleisher Art Memorial Visual Artist-in-Residence. She has also been awarded First Place in Editorial Photos with the Tokyo International Foto Awards, The me&Eve Grant with the Center of Photographic Arts in Santa Fe, and First Prize of Focus Photo LA. Trillo has exhibited internationally in Luxembourg, England, and Italy, and her work is included in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Congratulations to professional award winner Ada Trillo, who will receive $2,000. The Marty Forscher Fellowship Fund winners were chosen from the 2020 Photo Annual winners by Michelle Bogre and Paloma Shutes.
See the Student Winner
full gallery of winners
The Marty Forscher Awards
Photographer of the Year
First place winners
Editor’s Choice Award
Sponsored by Parsons School of Design and PHOTOPLUS these awards recognize one professional ($2,000 cash prize) and one student ($1,500 cash prize) who have made outstanding achievements in humanistic photography. The awards are given in memory of the sought-after camera-repair technician who helped equip Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Mary Ellen Mark, Joel Meyerowitz and many other photographers.
The series “I Died 22 Times” looks at the way warfare is waged outside real battlefields.
Rafael Heygster (born 1990) is a freelance photographer and journalist based between Hannover, Bremen and Leipzig, Germany. A student of photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Hannover and at DMJX in Aarhus, his long-term projects focus on the relation between individuals and their social, cultural and ecological environments. He is the recipient of several grants and awards for his work internationally and has been published by The British Journal of Photography, die ZEIT, stern, SPIEGEL, and GEO, among others.
Congratulations to student award winner Rafael Heygster, who will receive $1,500. The Marty Forscher Fellowship Fund winners were chosen from the 2020 Photo Annual winners by Michelle Bogre and Paloma Shutes.
full gallery of winners
The Marty Forscher Awards
Editor’s Choice Award
Photographer of the Year
First place winners
