From migrants to meat landscapes to everything in between, the 2016 Sony World Photography Awards exhibition returns to London’s Somerset House.As with any exhibition of this nature, annual events accepting submissions from across the world, the subjects or themes people choose to photograph tell us a lot about what preoccupied these photographers particularly and us as a world more generally in the last twelve months.Looking at the 500 images that make up the two parts of this exhibition (representing the professional and open categories respectively), definite patterns emerge. One of these is gender, and its its increasingly fluid nature. Entering this exhibition from its west wing, the first works confronting a visitor are the “Stereotypes” series by Egyptian photographer A. Tamboly. Featuring typically masculine men with the hair of historic women, it is, like the best work on display, a combination of a strong idea and a great execution. Whereas this work is a playful challenging on gender assumptions, other works such as Jetmir Idrizi’s series on a transgender community in Brazil takes a more serious, photojournalistic approach to the subject.Another hot-button issue captured at length in the exhibition, unsurprisingly, is the worldwide migrant crisis. Most effectively, it is explored in the work of Germany’s Kiki Streitberger, who photographs the few possessions Syrian refugees take with them alongside written testaments from these people to create a powerful work that manages to take a fresh look at a much-discussed problem.Further reactions to recent events see finalists exploring issues such as Ebola, FGM, “Black Lives Matter” protests, and the environment in their work. The overall winner, Iran’s Asghar Khamseh, also falls into this category, with a group of images of survivors of acid attacks in the photographer’s home country, entitled “Fire of Hatred,” which gain their power from Khamseh’s use of black backgrounds to create sombre but dignified portrayals of each individual, well deserving of the top prize.These works are all part of the general tone of the exhibition which, as curator Zelda Cheatle noted in a curator’s tour, is far more serious than in recent years, something she saw as part of the influence of social media like Instagram. With photography more ubiquitous than ever, photographers are trying to set themselves apart from the shallow selfie snappers with more profound work. It is notable, perhaps, that the only thing they have close to uttering the s-word here is in a staged image in which a selfie-stick-holding tourist finds himself lying face down in a puddle.As this image shows, the exhibition does have moments of levity to balance out the seriousness. One such moment is the work of Alberto Alicata, whose “Iconic B” works reproduce famous fashion photography shots from Avedon, Testino and Lachapelle using Barbie dolls. And in what is certainly the exhibition’s most surreal moment, Japan’s Hiroshi Watanabe presents his “Meaty Foodscape,” landscape vistas made out of cuts of meat; enough to leave even the most ardent photography fan in a stew.As may be clear, this can make for a jarring exhibition, with the movements from playful to political, silly to sombre often happening within the same room, and serving to cheapen both - with the more artistic work coming across as hollow, and the more photojournalistic work seeming overly graphic or reliant on shock value. This is especially the case when with the east wing’s open section. With each photographer only allowed to submit one photo, less themes emerge, making for a really incohesive set of images that are difficult to judge on an individual basis. Admittedly, this is always going to be a problem in a category-competition exhibition such as this, but more could be done to create smoother transitions between ideas so that the best work can speak for itself rather than having brighter or more shocking work speak for it. Perhaps the answer is to visit twice - once for the beauty, and once for the brains.“2016 Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition” runs April 22-May 8 at Somerset House, West and East Wings.
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