April 23rd marked the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards, with a glamorous ceremony held at the Park Lane Hilton, London.

Now in its eighth year, this free-to-enter competition showcases the best contemporary photography across a range of genres and is open to photographers of all abilities.

We take a look back at the winners...

This year saw a total of 173,444 entries, from emerging talent to establish artists across 171 countries. Shortlisting the finalists was a very tough task for the twelve-strong jury made up of professional photographers, industry experts and media editors.

The highlight of the event is the esteemed L’Iris d’Or/Professional Photographer of the Year award and its $25,000 prize. This year’s lucky winner was American photographer John Moore for his emotional series of images titled “Ebola Crisis Overwhelms Liberian Capital”.

The judges were impressed by his hard-hitting depiction of the scale of the Ebola crisis in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. In a collective statement, they commented: “John Moore’s photographs of this crisis show in full the brutality of people’s daily lives torn apart by this invisible enemy. However, it is his spirit in the face of such horror that garners praise. His images are intimate and respectful, moving us with their bravery and journalistic integrity. It is a fine and difficult line between images that exploit such a situation, and those that convey the same with heart, compassion and understanding, which this photographer has achieved with unerring skill. Combine this with an eye for powerful composition and cogent visual narrative, and good documentary photography becomes great.”

The remaining professional awards were split over thirteen subject categories, from Architecture to Current Affairs. The hotly-contested People category was won by Giovanni Troilo’s images documenting the economic, moral and social decline of his family’s home town of Charleroi, Belgium. Entitled “The Dark Heart of Europe”, Troilo’s photographs show the effects of the area’s industrial decline on its inhabitants; a theme echoed in many urban areas across Europe.

In almost complete contrast, the Adriatic coastline in Italy provided inspiration for the winner of the Travel category, Bernhard Lang. In a series of photographs which could easily be mistaken for simulated illustrations, Lang has in fact captured beautiful aerial perspectives of colourful sun loungers and beach umbrellas arranged in perfect patterns across the coast’s golden sands.

It was a selection of posters that won Bangladesh’s Rahul Talukder the Conceptual award. “Faded History of the Lost” presents ghostly images of sun and rain-weathered posters of those missing in the tragic 2013 collapse of a garment factory in Savar, Bangladesh.

The winning images shot by Simon Norfolk for the Landscape category could have been equally at home in the Contemporary Issues theme. Using a lines of fire, Norfolk illustrates where the front of the rapidly-retreating Lewis Glacier in Kenya used to reach. The contrast between these man-made ribbons of fire snaking in front of the disappearing ice flow creates a stark visual representation of man’s impact on the natural world.

Other prestigious categories include the Open Photographer of the Year award, with the overall winner named as amateur German photographer Armin Appel. His distinctive aerial image “Schoolyard” submitted for the Architecture category beat nearly 80,000 other entries to win this single snapshot competition and was taken whilst paragliding over the German landscape.

The Sony World Photography Awards is keen to acknowledge young photographic talent as well as professional. This year’s Youth Photographer of the Year prize was awarded to nineteen-year-old Malaysian student Yong Lin Tan for his night shot of a typical Malaysian back alley. The image demonstrates how a beautiful subject can sometimes be closer to home than you may think. In this case, the inspiration was just behind the photographer’s grandmother’s house.

Russian photographer Svetlana Blagodareva from Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University was the lucky winner of the Student Focus Award and was presented with $35,000-worth of Sony photographic equipment for her university. With a selection of atmospheric – almost abstract – Images, Blagodareva’s intention was to portray the absence of human personality in a fast-paced technological world.

But if there was one photographer that stole the show, it was the winner of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award, Elliott Erwitt. In a career spanning seven decades, Erwitt’s photography has covered subjects from JFK’s funeral and Nixon’s meeting with Khrushchev, to a not inconsiderable number of dogs. The latter has proven to be an enduring source of inspiration for Erwitt, with many such images imbued with his dry, satirical humour. This light-hearted approach to photography extends beyond canine curiosity and is a signature feature across his work. Citing Henri Cartier-Bresson’s influential “decisive moment” philosophy as pivotal in his own photography, Erwitt’s images have become renowned for capturing an array of momentary experiences and emotions present in everyday life. Whether it be humanity’s beauty, oddities, relationships, joys or pains; Erwitt’s sensitive, unobtrusive ability to capture such natural moments is a very rare skill indeed.

An exhibition of Elliott Erwitt’s photographs, plus the winning and shortlisted images from the Professional, Open and Youth categories in this year’s awards can be viewed at Somerset House in London until the 10th of May.

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