New York, Oct. 5, 2009 – Two new and diverse photography exhibitions open at Aperture Gallery on Oct. 22.  Photographs, depicting subjects from across 12 genres, by the winners and finalists of the 2009 Sony World Photography Awards will be exhibited alongside photos from the Sony® Artisans of Imagery™ program—six professional photographers who have been shooting editorial, advertising and personal projects with the Sony α900 DSLR camera during the last year.

Sony World Photography Awards Global Tour 2009/10

Each year the Sony World Photography Awards presents the winning professional and amateur images from across the world, offering unprecedented exposure to The World Photography Awards, its photographers and its partners.  As well as this New York stop, through the course of 2009 and into 2010 the tour will exhibit in prominent photographic institutions in Toronto, Mexico, London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok.  The tour will finish in Cannes, France in April 2010 as the main exhibition of the Sony World Photography Awards festival, a week-long celebration of photography.

The exhibition includes images by U.S. photographers David Zimmerman and Dustin Humphrey.  David’s striking landscape series ‘Desert’ won the coveted L’Iris D’Or / 2009 Sony World Photographer of the Year Award, along with a $25,000 cash prize. The images hauntingly depict the American southwest desert environment as a fragile ecosystem.  Photographer and World Photography Academy member Bruce Davidson said of Zimmerman’s images “We live in an era of environmental awareness. It is also an era of the image. Both can coexist to give us a sharper picture of the use and abuse of our deep oceans and beloved terra firma, which is far more at risk than we admit or know. Both image and meaning coincide in the imagery of photographer David Zimmerman. In his sensuous sharp focus, we become more aware of where we are as humans in the drifting sands of time.”

The Sony World Photography Awards is an annual competition that creates an international platform for emerging photographers to be discovered, and for professionals to showcase their new work. For further information about the Sony World Photography Awards please visit www.worldphotographyawards.org.

Sony Artisans of Imagery

The Sony Artisans of Imagery program is influencing the next generation of photographers, both professional and consumer. To celebrate the program’s first-year anniversary, Sony is showcasing its six professional photographers’ collections at Aperture Gallery. Each photographer will display select images exclusively shot with Sony’s α900 digital SLR camera during the last year all over the globe, including England, India, Madagascar, Thailand and the United States. Throughout the year, these photographers have been lecturing and providing educational workshops at U.S. universities and photography festivals. Additionally, their work has been published in books, editorial content, advertising campaigns and worldwide exhibitions.

Based on synergies between their unique styles of photography and Sony’s line of α DSLR cameras, Sony hand-selected six professional photographers to be included in its professional photographer program, Artisans of Imagery.  These pro photographers include Andy Katz, Me Ra Koh, David McLain, Christina Mittermeier, Brian Smith and Matthew Jordan Smith.

Visit www.Sony.com/darkroom for more information about the professional photography program. Visit Sony’s news and information site (www.sony.com/news) to find out more about Sony’s digital imaging products.

Aperture Foundation

Located in New York’s Chelsea art district, Aperture is a world-renowned non-profit publisher and exhibition space dedicated to promoting photography in all its forms. Aperture was founded in 1952 by photographers Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Barbara Morgan, and Minor White; historian Beaumont Newhall; and writer/curator Nancy Newhall, among others. These visionaries created a new quarterly periodical, Aperture magazine, to foster both the development and the appreciation of the photographic medium and its practitioners. In the 1960s, Aperture expanded to include the publication of books (over five hundred to date) that comprise one of the most comprehensive and innovative libraries in the history of photography and art. Aperture’s programs now include artist lectures and panel discussions, limited-edition photographs, and traveling exhibitions that show at major museums and arts institutions in the U.S. and internationally.

Exhibition details:

Aperture Gallery

Address: 547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor, Between 10th and 11th Avenues, New York

Tel: 001-212-505-5555

Open: Monday–Saturday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm   Sunday: closed

Dates: 22-30 October 2009

Press night: Thursday 22 October

www.aperture.org