Colour Divides Wins at the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards
17 February 2026 · Award · Sony World Photography Awards
Colour Divides has been named the winner of the Object category in the Open Competition at the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards.
Now in its 19th year, the Sony World Photography Awards is one of the world’s largest international photography competitions. Across the 2026 competitions, more than 430,000 images from over 200 countries and territories were submitted, with ten individual category winners selected for the Open Competition.
Photographed on a Google Pixel 6 in Cape Town’s historic Bo-Kaap neighbourhood, Colour Divides centres on a blue Ford Cortina resting between vivid pink and green facades. The photograph emerged from a spontaneous moment in which colour, geometry, architecture and chance briefly aligned.
Its title moves beyond the formal divisions within the frame.
Bo-Kaap has a complex history shaped by slavery, emancipation, segregation and community. Houses in the neighbourhood were historically painted white, while their later transformation through vivid colour became associated with expressions of freedom, identity and ownership after emancipation.
Against that history, the colour within the photograph carries a deeper significance, pointing towards South Africa’s wider histories of separation, identity and belonging.
Made with an everyday mobile phone rather than a conventional professional camera, the work also reflects a wider interest in questioning inherited assumptions about which photographic tools and images are granted legitimacy within contemporary art.
Following the award, Colour Divides was exhibited at Somerset House in London before joining the international Sony World Photography Awards exhibition programme.
