Two major photography awards have been won by an ECA alumnus and a current student.
Robby Ogilvie (MA Contemporary Art Theory, 2011) is one of the winners of this year’s Sony World Photography Awards. He won the ‘Open Competition, Object’ category, with his image Colour Divides, taken in Cape Town.
Meanwhile, Fourth Year BA (Hons) Photography student Emily Shade, is the winner of the student category in the Wex Photo Video Human Impact Awards with her project, A Temporary Kind of Forever – you can enjoy a carousel of her images below.
Sony World Photography Awards
The competition is one of the world’s largest, receiving more than 430,000 entries from more than 200 countries. This year’s open categories were judged by Assistant Curator, Photography, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Ruby Rees-Sheridan - with 10 winners in all. Robby Ogilvie’s photograph will be exhibited alongside the other winners at Somerset House, London from 17 April to 4 May 2026.
Robby said he had visited the winners’ exhibition in previous year and found it inspiring, so always hoped to enter, and this year captured an image he hoped might be worthy of the high-profile competition.
He said of the photograph: “It was an opportunistic moment made while I was working on my South Africa Spirit of Place book. I was in Cape Town and knew about the colourful Bo Kaap neighbourhood and wanted to visit, as form and colour play a central role in my work, but I had no idea about the car or the composition beforehand. As soon as I saw the blue Ford Cortina against the painted wall, I recognised the image.
“What I love about it is the clarity of the structure, the colour, the geometry, and the way something ordinary begins to feel slightly surreal. Living with the degenerative eye condition keratoconus has shaped how I see light, depth and form, so I am often drawn to images where colour and structure do a lot of the work.”
Since graduating, Robby has worked professionally across a range of fields including finance, design, technology and social impact, while continuing to develop his artistic and photographic practice. His work has received increasing recognition over the past 18 months, enabling him to dedicate himself to it full time, with exhibitions and commissions, and self-publishing artist books and zines.
He said his time at ECA had given him a vital grounding for his future career: “Studying MA Contemporary Art Theory at ECA helped me think more critically about image making and visual culture. It encouraged me to look beyond aesthetics and consider how photographs operate within wider cultural and conceptual contexts.
“It also gave me a strong foundation in thematic research, curation and sequencing, which has been hugely important in shaping projects, editing bodies of work, and thinking about how photographs are displayed and experienced in exhibitions or book form. That way of thinking still underpins my practice today.”
Wex Photo Video Human Impact Awards
Emily Shade won the student award with her project, A Temporary Kind of Forever, which explores human impact through the lens of rave culture, looking at how young people create spaces of connection, identity and resilience in response to the world around them.
Her photographs focus on the communities that form within night-time environments, where people gather to celebrate, to belong, and to momentarily escape the pressures of everyday life.
Emily said: “Rather than viewing nightlife as chaos or escapism, this series treats it as a powerful social space where human experience is amplified. Within sound, light and darkness, people find each other, build temporary communities, and express who they are without judgement.
“The images capture vulnerability, joy, unity and emotional release, revealing how shared moments can shape how we inhabit, respond to and cope with the world. This is human impact through togetherness: connection as survival, and collective joy as resilience.”
Emily travels to London for the awards ceremony held at the British Film Institute this evening (26 March).
