Champions of the 2024 Booooooom Photography Awards Revealed
**2024 Booooooom Photography Awards Winners Revealed**
*Honoring Innovative Talent and Storytelling in Modern Photography*
The art community has recently focused on the eagerly awaited revelation of the winners of the 2024 Booooooom Photography Awards. Organized by the prominent Canadian art platform Booooooom, which supports emerging artists, this year’s contest highlighted a diverse array of viewpoints across various styles, genres, and cultural contexts.
Now in its third iteration, the Booooooom Photography Awards have established themselves as a trusted indicator of current photographic creativity and expression. The 2024 edition attracted thousands of entries from more than 60 nations, featuring photographers capturing powerful stories about personal identity, environment, memory, and the surreal.
**Major Award: Grand Prize Winner – Layla Santiago**
The Grand Prize for 2024 has been presented to Mexican-American photographer **Layla Santiago** for her series *“Hilos de Mi Abuela”* (“Threads of My Grandmother”). Santiago’s deeply personal project examined intergenerational memory through portraits and still lives that honored her grandmother’s craft as a seamstress in Oaxaca.
The judges commended Santiago’s expressive handling of lighting, texture, and symbolism. Her meticulously arranged scenes fused documentary and fine art practices, resulting in a hauntingly stunning narrative on work, family, and heritage. As part of the grand prize, Santiago will receive a $5,000 monetary award, international visibility through Booooooom’s platform, and a feature in an upcoming anthology of art books.
**Category Winners**
The 2024 awards comprised five primary categories, each evaluated by a panel of photographers, curators, and editors from around the globe.
1. **Portrait Photography** – *Winner: Adewale Thomas (Nigeria)*
Thomas’s portrait series *“Still Water”* showcases Lagos youth in contemplative moments of stillness. His work was celebrated for its psychological depth and its challenge to typical portrayals of urban African life.
2. **Nature & Landscape** – *Winner: Min Ji Park (South Korea)*
Park’s expansive analog images of the Jeju coastline provided a meditative visual contrast between isolation and expansiveness. Her minimalist compositions probed the emotional weight of voids.
3. **Experimental Photography** – *Winner: Chloé Bernard (France)*
Bernard defied visual norms with her abstract series *“Distorted Hues,”* which experimented with long exposure and projection to explore color theory and perception.
4. **Documentary / Street Photography** – *Winner: Jorge Contreras (Peru)*
Contreras’s black-and-white series *“La Última Ruta”* chronicled the decline of railroad workers in Peru. His considerate photojournalistic efforts highlighted endangered lifestyles with respect and care.
5. **Youth Category (Under 21)** – *Winner: Zara Patel (India)*
At merely 17, Patel’s self-portraits blurred the distinction between identity and performance. Her project *“Becoming”* used layered reflections and cultural symbols to investigate adolescence and diasporic identity.
**Emerging Talent & Honorable Mentions**
In addition to the category winners, the panel acknowledged 20 photographers with honorable mentions, showcasing innovation with AI-generated imagery, drone photography, and traditional printing methods such as cyanotype.
Tokyo-based artist Kenji Mori’s time-lapse work was praised for its lyrical rhythm, while Canadian Indigenous photographer Skye Clearwater received an honorable mention for her documentation of traditional Salish ceremonies.
**A Platform for Creative Development**
According to Booooooom founder and curator Jeff Hamada, the Photography Awards aim for more than just recognition. “Exposure and community are essential for emerging photographers,” Hamada remarked. “We strive to create a space where unique voices resonate, and novel forms of visual storytelling are honored.”
The award-winning photographs will be displayed in a dedicated virtual exhibition on Booooooom.com and will be included in an upcoming zine published in collaboration with Format and PhotoShelter, two key sponsors of the competition.
For artists and enthusiasts alike, the 2024 Booooooom Photography Awards once more confirmed photography’s ability to redefine the ordinary, evoke compassion, and ignite creativity.
**About Booooooom**
Established in 2008 by Jeff Hamada, Booooooom stands as one of the foremost online art curation platforms, committed to highlighting innovative works in visual arts, photography, illustration, and design. The platform has developed into a crucial incubator for emerging artists around the world.