The Minimalist Photography Awards has announced the winners of the sixth edition of their competition. As stated on the organizers' website: “With more than 3,400 submissions from talented photographers worldwide, this year’s awards have showcased an extraordinary level of creativity and skill in minimalist photography.”
The jury selected the best images of 2024 across 12 categories: Abstract, Landscape, Portrait, Street, Open Theme, Photomanipulation, Conceptual, Night, Aerial, Fine Art, Architecture, and Long Exposure. Eva Chupikova has been named Minimalist Photographer of the Year for her photo series titled “Anna.”
Scroll down to see the best pictures from this year’s Minimalist Photography Awards by both amateur and professional photographers from around the world.
More info: Instagram | minimalistphotographyawards.com
#1 Open, Honorable Mention: Arrival By Fenqiang “Frank” Liu
Every spring, I become excited as the great egrets begin their breeding season in Florida, marking the start of my spring photography season. The joy captured in my images reflects my enthusiasm.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
Bored Panda reached out to Kateryna Polishchuk, who won 2nd place in the Aerial category for her image ‘Shadow Basketball III.’ We wanted to gain more insights from Ukrainian photographers about their awarded work. Polishchuk began by sharing what initially inspired her to photograph this unique basketball court, featuring a tree growing at its center: “I have always been looking for unusual photo spots since I started to fly drones a few years ago. This basketball court is part of a so-called urban park, the first one of the three urban parks built in my city of Kharkiv, Ukraine in 2020-21 and I've never found any information about other courts like this one elsewhere in the world. (Are there any?)”
#2 Aerial, 2nd Place Winner: Shadow Basketball III By Kateryna Polishchuk
While constructing basketball grounds in an urban park in Kharkiv, Ukraine, the designer team made this creative decision to show their respect for nature and save this big tree from being removed.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#3 Landscape Photographer Of The Year: Arctic Silence 5 By Patrick Ems
A lone musher with his dogs drives through the vast expanses of Spitsbergen.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
We were curious about Kateryna's approach to minimalism in photography, and she explained: “It has been my experience that the typical urban environment offers rather limited opportunities for minimalistic aerial photography. But outdoor sports facilities and basketball courts in particular always make for interesting photo spots. They have certain conciseness and also dynamics, of course. I consider it best to visit them not in the golden hour but during the sunny day when the shadows can be used as additional elements of composition or optimally positioned like the shadow of this oak tree in the middle.
#4 Landscape, Honorable Mention: That Lonely Tree By Helen Trust
The famous lonely tree at sunrise in Valensole, Provence.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#5 Fine-Art, 3rd Place Winner: Dancing Trees By Marleen Van Hove
The dancing mangrove trees on the Sumba island in Indonesia.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
We were curious about Kateryna's approach to minimalism in photography, and she explained: “It has been my experience that the typical urban environment offers rather limited opportunities for minimalistic aerial photography. But outdoor sports facilities and basketball courts in particular always make for interesting photo spots. They have certain conciseness and also dynamics, of course. I consider it best to visit them not in the golden hour but during the sunny day when the shadows can be used as additional elements of composition or optimally positioned like the shadow of this oak tree in the middle.
#6 Abstract, Honorable Mention: ROJA By Benjamin Quadflieg
ROJA is a photo series about La Muralla Roja, a famous apartment building by architect Ricardo Bofills. It is known for the interaction of various colors and shapes. The photo series captures this unique ensemble in a minimalistic, abstract way.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#7 Abstract Photographer Of The Year: Color Conversation By Gleici Rufatto
A series of geometric images that explore the interplay of color, form, and material, capturing an essence reminiscent of architectural elements. Each piece is centered on abstract forms within the built environment, presenting a visual journey that challenges perceptions and creates a color dialog that invites viewers to consider how colors interact and influence one another within a structured composition.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
Lastly, the photographer explained how this award-winning image fits into the broader context of her work: “Before aerial photography I specialized in landscapes, both urban and natural, while nature has always inspired me most. Until now, nature has been present in most of my works, one way or the other. I cannot say I purposefully explore the themes of nature coexisting with man-made environments but this sure interests me a lot and I would be happy to do it more often in the future, I have new ideas.”
#8 Abstract, 2nd Place Winner: Magic Angles By Matthias Yamakasino Brandt
I took these pictures in Switzerland, the Canary Islands, Austria and Spain. My goal as a photo artist is to find angles that reveal unexpected beauty in the mix of geometrical shapes and colors. The simplicity invites you to eventually almost forget that you are looking at actual buildings. This is when the magic happens and you sink into the picture and forget about everything around.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#9 Landscape, 2nd Place Winner: Winter Cottonwoods By Andrew Mielzynski
During the pandemic, I went out for a walk at a local park during a fierce winter storm. I ran across this scene. It seemed very chaotic with many layers of trees. I loved how the snow, driven by high winds, got embedded into the bark of the trunks. The snow on the bark created a textural contrast that adds detail and interest to the trees. I took a few frames, trying to simplify the scene in front of me and settled on this one, loving the tones, the depth, the order and the minimalism. Even in a chaotic scene, there seems to be a sense of balance that feels orderly and pleasing.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#10 Abstract, 3rd Place Winner: Waterworld (Oil & Water Studies) By Beth Buelow
Part of the search for balance and harmony with elements purported not to mix. Created using in-camera double exposure.
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#11 Aerial, 3rd Place Winner: Pink On Pink By Magali Chesnel
Greater flamingos are taking off from a wild lagoon of St. Martin island, based in Southern France. Being normally a migratory bird, it happens that a certain population of greater flamingos decides to stay, as it has been the case for those living in Camargue, one of Europe’s largest wetlands, hosting a vegetation variety, but also a natural wildlife paradise, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.They have been breeding there naturally for centuries (back to the Roman times) and according to experts, the greater flamingos might be one of the few survivors that will continue to live or to come to this natural reserve, despite the heavy erosion and rising sea levels, due to climate change.
The color of the greater flamingos varies according to seasons. Almost white in summer, their plumage becomes flamboyant, with a very pink color, during winter time. This is indeed during this season that they engage in courtship displays to attract their future partner.
Their bright pink color comes from beta-carotene, a red-orange pigment that’s found in high amounts within the algae, brine fly larvae, and brine shrimp that they eat in this wetland environment. As this diet is nearly exclusively carotenoid, the birds have no problem coloring themselves.
This pink color of the water is due to dunaliella salina, an algae rich in beta-carotene which takes all its intensity from above, especially during the summer time.
Thanks to the natural beauty of this French colorful area, which never ceases to amaze my pupils, and together with my aerial shot, I like creating a confusion between reality and illusion, photography and painting, based on Rothko’s principles: insisting on the primacy of raw emotion, to push the boundaries of form and color, to make photos appear as “painting-like” as possible.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#12 Architecture, 2nd Place Winner: White On White By Janet Capling
I drove past this house the day after a Canadian winter snowstorm. The virgin snow in front of the house and on the roof made a perfect minimal shot. The uniqueness of this architecture is the missing steps and balcony at of the two doors!
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#13 Fine-Art Photographer Of The Year: Delicate By Hilda Champion
Delicate, graceful, elegant, tender, fine, vulnerable.
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#14 Photo Manipulation, 2nd Place Winner: Going Home By June Yunjung John
On the way home from the day’s work. The time everyone wants.
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#15 Photo Manipulation, 3rd Place Winner: The Tunnel By Selina Bressan
I transformed the main entrance of a building into a tunnel leading to a new world. This picture is part of a series called “The suns”.
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#16 Night, Honorable Mention: Eyes On The Prize By Wai Hoe Mok
This photograph shows a pair of grey reef sharks chasing after their prey, a fusilier fish, during a night hunt. The photograph was shot in South Fakarava, French Polynesia, a very remote location where sharks are abundant. Sharks are aggressive when they are hunting at night and Fakarava is one of the rare locations where night diving is not banned due to the risks involved. However, it was a challenge just putting a crew together that would enter the water for this photoshoot.
To hide from the sharks, prey hid amongst the cracks and crevasses in the corals. In this photo, a fusilier was detected, which attracted a shiver of sharks to break through the corals to flush the fusilier out. What followed was a high speed chase in the pitch darkness of the night. I kicked my fins as hard as I could and followed the chase with my camera furiously firing and was fortunate enough to capture this image.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#17 Long Exposure, Honorable Menion: About Decision Making By Jan Pudil
It is a picture from Rodos. With long exposure, I wanted to underline the very long time that he was thinking about jumping.
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#18 Aerial, Honorable Mention: Beach Bliss By Simon Heather
Local sun lovers bring their brightest towels, swimsuits and umbrellas to the shores of Cascais, Portugal, creating a wonderful vibrant wallpaper, sprawling with life, when viewed from above. Life is better at the beach!
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#19 Aerial Photographer Of The Year: Winter Drawings By Yevhen Samuchenko
Winter drawings by Yevhen Samuchenko I created this aerial series in the Carpathian Mountains in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine. In these parts of Ukraine, the houses are sparsely placed on low mountains, sometimes close to the forest. This allows me to see more minimalist scenes of rural life. The snow-covered mountains resemble a blank sheet of paper, and a combination of elements of rural life and nature creates simple but no less amazing sketches resembling pencil drawings. This is especially noticeable from above, which is why I chose to work with a drone for this project. I spent many days hiking in the winter Carpathian Mountains looking for interesting subjects for this series.
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#20 Conceptual, Honorable Mention: The Heart By Christian Hopfensitz
I wanted to create a special couple photo showing their love with the geometric shape of a heart.
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#21 Architecture, Honorable Mention: Windows By Manfred Gruber
Austria / Vienna / Inner courtyard
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#22 Street, Honorable Mention: The Escape By Marco Wilm
This photo was taken in Berlin, May 2024. It shows a boy running and jumping from white circle to white circle.
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#23 Architecture Photographer Of The Year: Another Brick In The Wall By Les Forrester
It’s not often today you see a modern building constructed with bricks, so it’s a welcome change from the steel, glass and concrete we normally see.
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#24 Architecture, 3rd Place Winner: Guggenheim Ceiling By Margaret Renaud
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#25 Photo Manipulation Photographer Of The Year: Innervisions By George Byrne
For the Innervisions series, I wanted to explore ideas around the subconscious mind by tapping into dreams and symbols. This process led me to further embrace the less literal aspects of my photographic practice. The resulting images, while rooted in the urban environments of LA and Miami, are largely dreamscapes. I also tried approaching certain images like abstract paintings, these are impressions, heavily edited and assembled in ways as to promote the composition, rather than the context. The term Innervisions was inspired by Stevie Wonder’s 1973 masterpiece of the same name – a record about the sensory joys/struggles of the inner self.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#26 Fine-Art, Honorable Mention: Parking Spot By Rob Chambliss
Danville, California
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#27 Landscape, 3rd Place Winner: Transcendence – Sand Dunes Of Morocco By Rosa Frei
I have photographed the sand dunes of Morocco for 17 years. But only since I discovered the ICM technique (Intentional Camera Movement) do I feel like I capture the spirit of the dunes and the essence of time.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#28 Long Exposure, 3rd Place Winner: Time Less By Martin Annand
A collection of images from around the UK’s coastline.
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#29 Night, 2nd Place Winner: Heavenly By Cliff Spooner
A local yet remote church at night beneath a starry sky with distant light pollution, partially lit by a full moon from behind my position.
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#30 Portrait, Honorable Mention: Phenomenon By Ypatia Kornarou
The Photographic Project “Phenomenon” is inspired by the symbolic operation of the “Doomsday Clock”. The “Apocalypse Phenomenon” is decoded through a non-“real time” countdown of the clock hands concerning the extinction of humanity. Time shortens as the clock hands approach midnight, the end of the world. Nuclear weapons, wars, climate change, pandemics, artificial intelligence and the evolution of technology in general are essentially the factors that have influenced in recent years the uncontrollable march of the 90 seconds left in 2024 on the “Doomsday Clock “.
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#31 Fine-Art, 2nd Place Winner: Pressure And Time By Michael Rudzikewycz
Between being busy with life in general and an unreliable car, my photo road trips have been limited. But over the last year, I’ve been going on walks through wooded trails and along a river that’s in my neighborhood. At first I was passively looking at the shapes of all the rocks in and near the river. Also at the time, I was looking at a lot of abstract and minimalistic paintings, so during one of my evening walks along the river, I had this idea to photograph the shapes of all these rocks I’ve been looking at over the weeks. I then started picking up anything with an interesting shape or markings. This led into looking for shapes that complemented each other. It was a relaxing project to work on and I continue to work on.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#32 Night Photographer Of The Year: Half Moon By Andy Ofarrell
Taken from my balcony Dubai Marina. The camera is always on hand. Just in case.
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#33 Night, 3rd Place Winner: The Night Dissolves By Pierre Pellegrini
The night dissolves to leave space and time for the new day. Everything happens calmly. The lights meet, mix, greet each other and dissolve. A situation that has been going on for millennia.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#34 Open, 3rd Place Winner: Gomigami By Agata Pec
Dramatic forms suspended in peaceful stillness. Full of emotion yet strangely quiet. Chaotic, but somehow making sense. Boring or hypnotic? Using salvaged off cuts from the paper background used in the studio I explore the complex beauty hidden in the overlooked. What was once deemed as trash now takes centre stage. The title “Gomigami” is a playful twist on the traditional Japanese art of origami, where “gomi” meaning “trash” or “waste” replaces “ori” (folding) and “gami” meaning “paper”.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#35 Portrait Photographer Of The Year: Anna By Eva Chupikova
Anna draws inspiration from the Renaissance, a period that celebrated the revival of classical artistic values and principles like harmony and proportion. Garments of that era were designed with intricate patterns, rich fabrics, and luxurious embellishments to symbolize wealth and social status. In our contemporary world, garments are manufactured with cheap labor at low cost to maximize profits. The result thereof is that we are engulfed in material excess and overwhelmed by visual and information stimuli. Materialism is the “new” symbolism of wealth and social status. In all this chaos, we yearn for a new sense of conformity and balance with our environment and ourselves. Whilst Anna conceptually is influenced by the Renaissance era, Anna’s vision is rooted in a more minimalist concept that eliminates the unnecessary, focusing solely on the essential – finding „beauty“ in simplicity.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#36 Photo Manipulation, Honorable Mention: Confíteor Deo Omnipoténti By Simone Bolandrini
A surreal way of understanding the Christian confession.
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#37 Long Exposure Photographer Of The Year: Torii By Ulana Switucha
Torii gates in Japan are elements in the landscape that symbolize the essence of Japanese culture and spirituality. In the Shinto spiritual tradition, Japanese torii gates are a symbol of the transition from the secular world to a sacred space. Honouring the natural realm, the simplicity and shape of a torii in the landscape draws the senses and spirit to embrace nature’s power and beauty. A minimalist approach draws the viewer into peaceful meditation.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#38 Street, 2nd Place Winner: Melancholy By Nina Papiorek
Melancholy hovers over this series. The people remain unrecognisable and are therefore replaceable. Perhaps their mood is completely different in real life, but in the photos something melancholy emanates from them, small symbols such as a lowered head or loneliness. For me, the focus of this series was to tear the situation and individual images completely out of their context and to give the viewer something thoughtful to take away with them.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#39 Street, 3rd Place Winner: Seperate By Marco Wilm
This photo was taken in Berlin, January 2024. It shows a man and a woman seemingly crossing paths without knowing, as they are on different levels. I wanted to create a very symmetrical shot and also a shot with deeper meaning to it. In the world we often feel separated from another, yet from a different viewing angle we can see the connection.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#40 Portrait, 2nd Place Winner: Pearls By Olivia Mazzola
A viceversa portrait.
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#41 Conceptual, 2nd Place Winner: Interwoven By Paula Aranoa
It happened like this. That morning we had been taking photos when she, the model, sat on a chair and, letting her head fall back against the backrest, revealed her back through the delicate, half-open dress. The image moved me. And, like a flashback, the immense ferns I had photographed years before on a trip to Guatemala came to mind. That day it was pouring rain, and as I was running for shelter, I suddenly saw them, soaked in an open-air courtyard. Where there were ferns, I saw backs. Hundreds of backs, which unfolded their bodies like a stage for the thousands of drops that begged to be seen. The rain no longer mattered to me, and I exposed myself as well. Standing in front of them with my camera, I took them out of anonymity. From this first diptych that came to me by chance, I began to see in some features of nature my own femininity. Connections that weave us together. A preference for simple dressing and minimal adornment, for words spoken softly and textures that slow down the gaze. I was amazed to find a shared courage: the daring to show ourselves vulnerable as the only way to genuine connection and authentic expression. I understood that our vulnerability is, in fact, our greatest strength.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#42 Long Exposure, 2nd Place Winner: Sunrise By Kyle Hoffmann
Image of the sun over 4-5 hours. Captured with a medium format film camera, film hand developed.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#43 Open, 2nd Place Winner: Street Entanglement By Samuel Ioannidis
The photo “Street Entanglement” presents an impressive fusion of lines and geometric shapes with the urban population. The image captures the harmony that arises when people and architecture merge together. The lines and structures in the image direct the viewer’s gaze to the subtle connection between people and the city, blurring the boundaries between them. “Street Entanglement” invites the viewer to explore the poetry of urban life and discover the beauty in the everyday cityscape. The photographic technique emphasizes the magic that arises when the city’s lines accompany the stories and movements of the people
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#44 Conceptual, 3rd Place Winner: One Last View By Klaus Lenzen
Sections of torn and peeling billboard posters are not an uncommon sight in everyday life. Under the layers of paper bizarre fragments of faces are often revealed. Some become visible on the surface, others remain hidden underneath. These motifs fascinated me in their imperfection and so I have captured many of them over the years, as they offered the opportunity for me to create my own works of art out of them.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#45 Portrait, 3rd Place Winner: A Rainy Day By Cerrina Smith
Self portrait taken during a rainy day.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#46 Street Photographer Of The Year: Spectrum By Daniel Mead
These photographs are from an upcoming series of mine called ‘Spectrum’. For this series I tried to leverage colour relationships to evoke specific moods, highlight subjects and create a harmonious or dynamic composition intertwined with the natural world…transforming the ordinary into a kaleidoscopic feast for the eyes.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#47 Open Photographer Of The Year: The Unseen Poem By Richard Bentley
‘The Unseen Poem’ is a set of photographs taken over a period of 18 months. The last 2 years have been hard both personally and professionally and these images represent a freedom and a release from these confines. These photographs are meant to be seen as the unseen poem might be read during an English literature test… the reader must interpret the images and explain the meaning to themselves and back to me, for I do not always know what they mean as I am creating them, even if they do talk to me.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
#48 Conceptual Photographer Of The Year: Darkness At The Break Of Day By Kenneth Collins
These images represent my sense of the state of the world today with wars, climate change and the divisive nature of people around the world. It seems like a dark time for humanity on so many levels.
Image credits: Minimalist Photography Awards
