From aerial footage of an Indian pilgrimage to portraits of Romanians in bear costumes, this year’s awards featured stunning images from the streets of 23 countries

Paws for a picture … Luca Paccusse’s Doggy Bag. Photograph: Luca Paccusse

Thu 18 Dec 2025 02.00 ESTLast modified on Thu 18 Dec 2025 06.53 EST

Jozef Macak: Tides of Life (First place series winner)

The Buriganga River in Bangladesh once carried life through Dhaka’s heart. Today, it bears the weight of the city’s rapid growth. Yet along its banks, life flows on. People work, trade, rest and endure. These photographs trace the uneasy intimacy between people and water – offering a glimpse into a reality where water nourishes and betrays, and where its spirit persists against the slow ache caused by environmental neglect. See all LensCulture Street Photography award winners

David Masoko: Dislocated Presences (Second place series winner)

This series lingers in the spaces where human presence quietly disappears from view, presenting fragments that don’t claim any resolution. Made in major cities across different countries, the photographs drift between the accidental and the composed. Their aesthetic is deliberately understated, echoing the rhythm of the street, the anonymity of urban and digital life, the invisible gestures of those we pass without knowing. The pairing is essential: each image unsettles or completes the other

Chervine Dalaeli: Silent Motion, Vibrant Stillness (Third place series winner)

This series explores the balance between movement and stillness in the city, capturing bursts of colour in motion and quiet moments of reflection. It places solitude and togetherness in contrast, inviting viewers to see the urban landscape as a living canvas where motion and pause exist in harmony; a stage where natural light lingers, figures drift like echoes and time itself seems suspended

Luca Paccusse: Doggy Bag (Juror pick)

‘I took this photo in Rome, Italy. I was walking near the Colosseum and I saw a tourist with her dog hanging from her purse. I captured the moment when she was taking a selfie in front of the monument, with a dog that almost looks like a puppet. Not only was it an amusing scene; it also characterises our times – for better or worse – as well as the historic centre of the Eternal City, torn between the beauty of the past and the eccentricities of modern life’

Rodrigo Koraicho: Beach Epiphany (Juror pick)

This is a photographic exploration of the layered social and psychological landscape of Miami Beach – a space shaped by the tensions of cultural and economic disparities. Surrounded by swamps, skyscrapers and the looming threat of climate collapse, the city embodies both the spectacle of excess and the fragility of its foundations. Started in 2017, Beach Epiphany evolved as a long-term investigation into the complex relationships between bodies, fluid identities and the landscape

Jan Janssen: Identity (Juror pick)

This series explores the New Year’s Eve rite of the Bear Dance in the Romanian towns of Asău and Dărmănești, depicting a population in which tradition and the future merge. On the last day of every year, many inhabitants of Romania across the generations dress in (often real) bear skins, to usher in the new year the same way as their ancestors did. Even the smallest among them are dressed as little bear cubs. The tradition is rooted in the culture of the Geto-Dacians – the ancestors of present-day Romanians more than 1,000 years ago

Kebs Cayabyab: Synchronicities (Juror pick)

Laura Sackett, creative director of LensCulture: ‘When I first saw Kebs Cayabyab’s Synchronicities, I smiled – and then lingered. The images feel light and playful, yet it’s clear they come from a process of patient looking and deliberate framing. Cayabyab notices subtle alignments and fleeting, offbeat connections in the everyday, turning ordinary moments into witty, surreal discoveries. What seems effortless is grounded in sharp attention and great skill’

Étienne Perrone: Dreams Happen After Dark (Juror pick)

This series explores the fragile boundary between reality and fiction in the sleeping city. Taken at night, the photographs capture urban fragments emptied of human presence that become silent stages for an unseen play. Many viewers assume these colours are added in post-production, but they are created on site, in the moment of capture

Javier Arcenillas: Cartago (Juror pick)

A young woman sleeps on the train from Carthage to Tunis. Photography captures this brief moment of intimacy, reflecting the beauty of a fleeting instant through poetry and light

Robic Upadhayay: Nostalgia, In the Heart of Childhood (Juror pick)

‘These beautiful souls I encountered were immersed in one of life’s simplest joys; moments that may one day shine in their memories as the best days of their lives. Or perhaps they will be left behind, forgotten in the pursuit of other happiness’

Antoine Rozès: San Francisco Blues (Juror pick)

‘No project, no statement, just feelings – this was what I felt when I took these photographs. The blues are immersive. They were hard times, of loneliness and sorrow. But looking back, the blues were a feeling that let you know that you exist’

Sanghamitra Sarkar: Wari (First place single winner)

This aerial image captures a moment from the Wari, the renowned pilgrimage that takes place every year in Maharashtra, India. Thousands of Warkaris (devotees) are seen gathered in a perfectly circular formation, all dressed predominantly in white traditional attire. At the centre lies a sacred palanquin. The symmetry and discipline of the gathering reflects deep devotion, unity and the centuries-old tradition of the Wari, which celebrates collective faith, equality and spiritual harmony

Tittu Shaji Thomas: The Pause Before Light (Second place single winner)

‘This photograph was taken on a cold morning by the banks of the Yamuna River in Delhi, India. The man was standing still, wrapped in a shawl, as if absorbing the stillness of the moment. A stray dog beside him, tense with instinct, sensed the frenzy of birds flying into the dawn sky. I did not ask them to pose. I simply observed, drawn to the contrast between movement and stillness, animal and human, darkness and awakening light’

Bartosz Michalik: Mirror (Third place single winner)

A National Gallery visitor in London in an open-back dress sketches before Susanna at Her Bath. Her posture echoes the model’s turned back and backward glance, creating a quiet dialogue across centuries between observer and image