Chinese photographer Jianguo Gong is today announced as the winner of the Open Culture category of the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards, the world's largest photography competition. The perfectly captured image, "Tai Chi", also secured Jianguo 1st place in China National Award, a global program to find the best single photographs from more than 60 countries.

Jianguo (aged 56), a freelance photographer originally from Wuhan City, Huiji Jiang'an District and now based in the Hubei province, was selected from over 105,000 entries to the Awards’ Open competition. He is one of the Awards’ ten Open category winners announced today. Each winning photographer receives a Sony α7 II with lens kit and will now compete to win the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards’ Open Photographer of the Year title, a trip to the winners' awards ceremony in London in April and $5,000 US dollars.

Gong's winning work will be shown alongside the awards’ other winning and shortlisted images at the Sony World Photography Awards & Martin Parr – 2017 Exhibition in London from April 21-May 7 and published in the annual winners’ book.

"It takes a few seconds to realise that there more to this picture than what initially grabs our attention. This isn’t just a bold pattern on a floor that’s decorated with white dots but a mass of uniformed athletes practicing synchronised Tai Chi. I love that sense of layering, especially as both the pattern of the floor and the carefully laid-out grid of humans are powerful elements in their own right. It’s very well done."

Damien Demolder, journalist and photographer, Chair of the Open competition

Sony World Photography Awards

Produced by the World Photography Organisation, 2017 sees the 10^th anniversary of the Sony World Photography Awards and a decade-long partnership with its headline sponsor, Sony. The Awards recognize and reward the very best contemporary photography captured over the last year, and incorporate four competitions - Professional, Open, Youth and Student Focus.? The overall winners of the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards will be announced on April 20.

China National Award

The Sony World Photography Awards’ National Awards competition is a global program open to photographers of all abilities. It aims to find the best single photograph taken a local photographer in 66 countries.

In addition to winning a category in the Open competition, judges also selected Jianguo’s work as the best single photograph taken by a Chinese photographer and awarded him the China National Award.

The runner up positions for China National Award were given to:

• 2nd Place: Ge Wang, for the image "Taking Photo"
• 3rd Place: Fanjing Lu, for the image "Sunned tea"

Courtesy of the organizer, for further information please visit www.worldphoto.org.