Australian Photographer wins top prize in Minimalist Photography Awards

27 August 2020

The Winners of the 2020 Minimalist Photography Awards have just been announced, with Australian photographer George Byrne awarded the top prize of $2,000 along with the title of Minimalist Photographer of the Year.

Byrne has taken home the win with three images; Yellow Stairs, Blue Awning and 71st St Miami, from his series Exit Vision.

The Minimalist Photography Awards is a non-profit association supported by Black & White Minimalism Magazine. The Awards were created to recognise the efforts, talent and expertise of photographers from all around the globe.

Byrne is a Sydney-born photographer now based in Los Angeles. He describes his winning series, as "a photo-collage, constructed from elements from multiple locations."

"For this series, I would look for ready-made vignettes of colour and form in the built world around me, and then try and repurpose or reinvent them. By embracing the process of photo-assemblage or collage, these photographs have become creations as much as they are observations," he says.

Now in its second edition, the Awards have given a platform to some incredible talent, as can be seen in the winning images that were selected from more than 4,200 photographs from over 40 different countires.

The work of the 2020 winners can be seen online here, and their work will also be exhibited at the Galerie Minimal in Berlin, Germany. The images will also be featured in print in the annual Awards book.

Milad Safabakhsh, Founder and Chief editor of Black & White Minimalism Magazine, as well as the founder and president of the Awards, explained that Minimalist photography is open to photographers from all genres, saying, "Minimalist photos are always an option as long as you have a minimal outlook towards your surroundings.”

You can see some of our other favourite shots from the competition below, and the full list here.

Hilda Champion. Title: In the Mangroves. A contemplative image of a fisherman inspecting his mangrove seedlings. — © Hilda Champion, In the Mangroves. A contemplative image of a fisherman inspecting his mangrove seedlings.

Santiago Martinez de Septien. Title: Coronavirus confinement. Millions of children in Spain, stuck at home since the authorities implemented a nationwide lockdown in mid-March, have been unable to exercise outside, take a short walk around their block, go with their parents to the supermarket or leave their house except for medical reasons.
Such measures, the strictest in Europe, have left countless children bored, exhausted and sometimes depressed. — © Santiago Martinez de Septien, Coronavirus confinement. Millions of children in Spain, stuck at home since the authorities implemented a nationwide lockdown in mid-March, have been unable to exercise outside, take a short walk around their block, go with their parents to the supermarket or leave their house except for medical reasons. Such measures, the strictest in Europe, have left countless children bored, exhausted and sometimes depressed.

© John Kosmopoulos, Oqaatsut Homes. Oqaatsut is a small Greenlandic town north of Ilulissat in Eastern Disko Bay. As the sun drenched and warmed the colourful homes and rocky landscape, it revealed clues of what life must be like there: a close but isolated community where the spirits of icebergs come and go in the distance. I wanted to convey the feeling of the town by using minimalist compositions and creative framing to provide portraits of life in Greenland. Most of the citizens were indoors, but one citizen overlooked our whereabouts while children played a game and chanted a song that echoed through the town.

Vicky Martin. Title: Selfhood. The series “Selfhood” is in part inspired by the proverb “The eyes are the window to the soul” and a desire to challenge the need to see the eyes within a portrait. The intention in each portrait is to create a character and a narrative and encourage an empathy without the visual stimulation of the eyes. — © Vicky Martin, Selfhood. The series “Selfhood” is in part inspired by the proverb “The eyes are the window to the soul” and a desire to challenge the need to see the eyes within a portrait. The intention in each portrait is to create a character and a narrative and encourage an empathy without the visual stimulation of the eyes.

© Marcin Giba. From the series Human on Earth. The photos from the Human on Earth series shows how amazing forms are hidden in places that from a normal perspective do not seem to us to be particularly interesting. Only the perspective from the drone shows us what visual potential is hidden in these places. In this cycle I show how man changes our natural landscape by introducing elements of architecture to it. Most of the photos from this series were made in my hometown of Rybnik (Poland).

© Rachel Warne, Decay by Night. Decay by Night is a continuation of Rachel Warne’s fascination with the beauty of decay. Rachel has embarked on several personal photographic projects such as ‘Faded Glory’ exhibited at the Garden Museum, London in 2015 and ‘The Beauty of Decay’ a collaboration with floral installation artist Rebecca Louise Law, touring several countries during 2017.