The Sony World Photography Awards: changing lives since 2008
©Nicolas Moulard
Before Claire Martin entered the Sony World Photography Awards in 2009, photography was nothing more than a hobby. “When I entered the competition I was working full-time as a cook and shooting a personal project in my spare time,” she tells me from her home in Perth, Australia. She decided to enter the SWPA Amateur category for the very first time, and submitted a photo of a frail heroin addict called Tony. The photo is undoubtedly harrowing, yet it feels sincere, and Claire deservedly walked away with the Amateur Portraiture prize that year.
All of a sudden Claire was a million miles from the kitchen she worked in, and instead was being lauded for her photographic talents alongside seasoned veterans from around the world. “Even though I was just an amateur category winner, I was treated with the same courtesy and privileges as the professional winners, and was introduced to so many fantastic photographers. Perth is very remote and removed from the photography world, and the portfolio review was an amazing opportunity for me to show my work to agencies, gallerists and editors.”
In fact, it was during this review that she was approached by Aiden Sullivan of Getty Images, who instantly saw Claire’s potential. “[He] actively supported my career by including me in Getty’s Reportage Emerging Talent showcase. Sony were also fantastic with their continued promotion of the winners - I got included in a lot of press at the time.”
© Claire Martin/INSTITUTE
From then on, Claire’s career has snowballed thanks to the exposure that the awards provided. She’s
previously been a member of an Australian photo collective called Oculi and had her photos distributed through Agence VU, and now she's exclusively represented by INSTITUTE. Yet, amongst all of this, she continues to find the time to work on her own projects too.
“My interests are in anthropology; social justice; the environment. I love storytelling, I love learning by being in new environments and experiencing ways of life that are vastly different to mine.” These interests have led her to document everything from the Haiti earthquake aftermath to outlandish gay sanctuaries off the coast of Australia.
© Claire Martin/INSTITUTE
Claire’s current project is one of the most adventurous she’s ever worked on. In 2010, she won the Inge Morath Award - an annual accolade that is given to a female photographer under the age of 30 - and last year she was involved in the Danube Revisited project, which involved travelling the length the Danube river alongside all of the previous award winners in honour of the area that meant so much to Inge Morath herself. Since then, she’s been working hard with the rest of the team on displaying the results at an exhibition, and it’s currently scheduled to premiere in July 2016. “It was a wonderful photographic road trip celebrating female talent in photojournalism, [and] the exhibition will show the work we created alongside Inge’s historical work on the region.”
Claire makes it clear numerous times that she sees SWPA as the catalyst the kickstarted the growth of her career, and she urges anyone who’s even briefly considered entering to go for it.
“Do it! There is absolutely no harm in having a go, especially as the competition is free to enter. A career is really a set of milestones, each one not necessarily life-changing, but the sum of them can be a dream come true. Every bit of effort and every small achievement counts.”
