With submissions from 140+ countries, Mexican photographer Ivan Silva clinched the Grand Prize with a stunning shot of a young football fan.
In today’s world, it’s getting tougher to spot the difference between photos taken with high-end cameras and those captured on smartphones.
The remarkable democratisation of photography has once again been celebrated through the dazzling results of the iPhone Photography Awards 2023.
With entries spanning the globe, this prestigious competition beckoned photographers from every corner of the world, armed with nothing more than their iPhones or iPads, to capture the essence of life through their lenses.
This year, the competition proudly embraced submissions from over 140 countries in 14 different categories, including Animals, Portrait, Cityscape and Travel.
Elevating itself above a pool of exceptional talent, Mexican photographer Ivan Silva’s shot of a young football fan wearing a Messi shirt emerged as the Grand Prize Winner.
Presented below are the winning images from each of the competition’s categories.
The iPhone Photography Awards is the first and the longest running iPhone photography competition since 2007.
Now in its 10th year, the California Academy of Sciences’ renowned BigPicture Photography Competition celebrates some of the world’s best photographers and the year’s most striking images. Judged by an esteemed panel of nature and conservation photography experts, the competition’s winning images and finalists highlight Earth’s biodiversity and illustrate the many threats that our planet faces. Each photo, in its own way, inspires viewers to value and protect the remarkable diversity of life on Earth. Below, we present the grand prize winner and some of our personal favorites from this year’s competition.
With a wildlife corridor passing through their property, a retired couple living on the outskirts of Asheville, North Carolina frequently finds four-legged visitors at their back porch, including this beautiful American black bear (Ursus americanus). In fact, residents of Asheville are known for their close relationship with wild black bears in the area. Photographer Corey Arnold theorizes that through this coexistence, the bears may be growing more intelligent and increasingly bold—resulting in close contact like that featured here.
An Arctic moth perches on a leaf in the night, theoretically on the lookout for a mate. Thanks to the freezing temperatures, and flanked by the ethereal tendrils of the Northern Lights, it moved very slowly, allowing the photographer to capture it.
An image years in the making: Seemingly coy hippopotamuses (Hippopotamus amphibius) sit below the surface of the water, eyes fixed on the camera. After extensively researching this specific family, including taking underwater drone footage of their behavior, photographer Mike Korostelev eventually felt comfortable enough to jump in and take this image. Why all the preparation? These hefty creatures kill more people per year than sharks, making an underwater image of them as spectacular an endeavor as it is dangerous.
A mesmerizing, yet deadly, spore scene. This beautiful, mushroom-forming fungus (Armillaria novae-zelandiae) is a member of the Physalacriaceae family—one of three Armillaria species native to New Zealand. This highly invasive species is often found on decaying wood and capable of causing root rot in plants with which it comes into contact.
Exhibiting a behavior that’s all-too human, a proboscis monkey (Nasalis larvatus) hugs another after preventing it from falling out of a tree. Endemic to the jungles of Borneo, these highly social animals are on the brink of extinction.
Impossible to see with the naked eye, this microscopic view of a lesser stag beetle (Dorcus parallelipipedus) shows what it looks like from head to chest. While these beautiful bugs look deceptively smooth on the surface, a closer look reveals a symphony of scales and textures.
When they coined the phrase “whale of a tale,” they must have been thinking of Hvaldimir—a beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) with an incredible backstory. After surfacing off the coast of Norway in 2019 wearing a Russian harness and a camera mount, locals believed that Hvaldimir had been trained as a spy. Beyond this theory, not much else is known about him, but as this image suggests, he’s gotten into a fair amount of trouble with humans. As he’s no longer part of a pod due to his domestication, he seeks out human interaction, which can be quite dangerous. 
These images originally appeared on bioGraphic, an online magazine about nature and regeneration and the official media sponsor for the California Academy of Sciences’ BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition.
Lead photo by Mike Korostelev
Cutting-edge science, unraveled by the very brightest living thinkers.
LEWISTON, N.Y. — The Lewiston Art Festival has been around since 1966 and will continue this summer on August 12 from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. and on the 13 from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. located on Center Street in the village.
The festival is for all ages and is an opportunity to bring people together to share their love for art. There will be more than 150 exceptional artists and fine crafters, giving people the opportunity to meet artists one on one.
According to the news release, there is no fee to attend, and parking is free, on a first come first serve basis. The event will also have food, drinks, and more for people to enjoy.
There will be both an Indigenous Market to celebrate the art of traditional and contemporary Native American art and crafts, and a College market featuring student-made work.
On Saturday at the festival, there will also be a Chalk Walk from noon – 4 p.m. The Chalk Walk is the centerpiece of the Art Walk, and teams of all ages with various competition categories.
Those interested in participating in the chalk walk can click here to learn more.
Chicago’s Field Museum has begun a new collecting initiative focusing on the impact of COVID-19 – and Evanstonians are a key part of the Pandemic Collection Project, as curators and artists.
When the new coronavirus began making headlines, museum staff realized they had no archives relating to the 1918 flu pandemic to shed light on the 2020 situation. Even though the museum was actively collecting back in 1918, when the city was hit hard by influenza, there was nothing for scholars to study.
Interestingly, the two eras are quite similar – and not just because of the twin pandemics.
The “Red Summer” of 1919 was one of violent racial unrest and protests throughout the country. The worst violence that year was in Chicago, beginning with the stoning and consequent drowning of a young black man who had ventured into a “white” swimming area on the South Side.
And it was also a time of rising pre-World War II antisemitism: In 1919, Hitler issued his first written comment on “the Jewish question,” calling for the removal of Jews from Germany.
The coronavirus pandemic period (2020 through 2022) has been rife with racial injustice and protests as well. Most demonstrations began in 2020, inspired by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. There was also an increase in antisemitic events nationwide in 2022.
The 2020 removal of three Christopher Columbus statues in Chicago, and others throughout the country, was in response to further public protests against the narrative of white supremacy and one-sided views of history.
The new, ongoing Field Museum collection is meant to be a record of expression and cultural responses – to the modern pandemic and to simultaneous movements for social justice – in art.
“This is new and innovative for the Field, which has been a traditional museum, one following an evolutionary model,” said sociocultural anthropologist Ana Croegaert, who is research director for the new collection’s curator team and a research affiliate for the Field.
The museum, Croegaert said, is using an expansive definition of art: dance, song, handmade objects, poems, photos. Already acquired are 180 objects, including digital files and textiles. The bulk are from Chicago, and often by Black makers, growing the museum’s diverse urban cultural anthropology collection.
Croegaert said that since the 1990s the Field has pursued community-based partnerships in the Chicago area, in Amazonia (particularly in Bogotá, Colombia, where the museum is focusing on environmental conservation), in the Philippines and in Indigenous communities in North America.
So the pandemic collection will include objects from Amazonia, a few from the Philippines and materials from Native American communities as well.
Five general themes emerged as interviews were analyzed: home, marking time, care and medicine, the public square, and food. The Native portion focuses on wellbeing, medicine and mental health.
Accompanying this collection and starting this fall will be a series of free “pop-up” displays around the Chicago area, with one promised for Evanston. The displays will be mostly projected, virtual rather than actual, and access will be open, with no fees. The collection is currently available for viewing on the museum website.
As part of the new collection, the Field has officially accessioned artwork by Evanstonians Beth Adler and Ben Blount.
During the pandemic isolation, Adler kept a daily journal of collaged art and created a series of paper sculptures. About the latter she said, ”Each month from the beginning of the pandemic until we had the vaccine, I constructed a paper ‘house’ and lined it with news reports from magazines and newspapers from that month, chronicling the progress of the virus as it was reported. These ‘houses’ were little memorials to those that suffered and died from COVID.”
Fitting into the theme of “home,” the Field acquired some of Adler’s “houses” and also a piece from her series Covid House Prints. Most of those prints featured a linoleum print of a crow.
“The crow came to represent COVID to me and being quarantined for weeks on end inspired this print,” said the artist. She donated her COVID journal to the collection.
Adler attended the Art Institute and has been a graphic designer ever since. Her company, Herman Adler, specialized in nonprofit communications and textbook design. She closed her company in 2019 and then retired as creative director for a publishing development company in 2021.
Blount is also a graphic designer, with an MFA from Columbia College in Chicago. He moved with his family from Detroit to Evanston in 2014. He works as associate creative director at Razorfish Health, an advertising agency, where he is working on marketing the RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine.
Blount’s personal artwork consists primarily of posters done by letterpress, a relief printing process, and their often unusual installations. The Field acquired prints from his White Supremacy Is protest artwork that was installed both here in Evanston and on the exterior of the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis.
This work falls into the “public square” category. The Field also purchased his letterpress print Blursday from January 2021.
Both artists said they were happy being isolated in their studios during the pandemic. They have contiguous studios with large storefront windows facing the street, so they were both able to see passersby, who often waved or gestured hello.
A third Evanstonian, Sarah Hinojosa, also participates in the museum’s pandemic collection. Her tree-mounted installation of poems and drawings is not considered an “artifact,” but part of the broader, community-based project.
Like Hinojosa’s Poetree, a hand stitching by artist-therapist Melissa Blount was not formally accessioned, but is included as part of the broader collection materials. The stitching by Blount, wife of Ben Blount, was inspired by a campaign that modified the sex-positive Cardi-B and Megan Thee Stallion song W.A.P. acronym to “What About Prosecuting” the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor in March 2020.
Croegaert is an Evanstonian too. She earned her doctorate in anthropology at Northwestern University, where she has taught. She also has taught at the University of New Orleans, Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Loyola University Chicago.
Croegaert is part of the Field’s core team creating the pandemic collection, which includes two more Evanstonians, Alaka Wali (co-lead for the project and the museum’s curator of North American anthropology) and Madeleine Tudor (senior environmental social scientist on the project and an applied urban anthropologist at the Field’s Keller Science Action Center).
August 01, 2023
We asked and you answered: Who would you want to see play Native Barbie? Native Barbie can be anyone or anything. She is a water protector, model, leader, artist, dancer, teacher, and so much more. All Indigenous women are sacred and beautiful inside and out.
Here are some of your responses to our question on social media.
Willie Jack !!!!!!
Tia Wood!! Tatts and all!
Oh we could pick ourselves ? Yesss I definitely would!
I think Jana Schmieding would be awesome!
Either one of my sisters, nieces, or cousins! Us Native women are beautiful!
I’m going to amend it to Indigenous and say Willow Allen.
Many readers suggested Ashley Callingbull, the Cree First Nations Canadian model, actress, and television personality who became the first Canadian and Indigenous woman to win the Mrs. Universe title in 2015.
Many others suggested Quannah Chasinghorse, Hän Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota model and climate protector who has been featured on the cover of Vogue and National Geographic.
Auntie Beachress! I like the concept because we would totally bring the native cultural love of the earth to such a plastic persona. With our indigenous power of humor and laughter
A regular girl from the Rez! our cousins, our aunties that we grew up to love! One who knows her culture and language. And not one who does cultural posts for social media likes and follows!
I have Native Barbie’s that have been gifted to me and I hate all of them cause they’re all put in what’s supposed to be regalia. Can I get a regular Native Barbie in a skoden tee & jeans
@ShaunaBaker all the way.
The gal from PREY
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