HIGH NOTE PHOTOGRAPHY
High Note Global Prize in Photography · Photography 4 Humanity · UN Headquarters Exhibition
The 2026 High Note Global Prize in Photography winners will be revealed on December 10, 2026 — UN Human Rights Day — at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
Where image and human rights converge at global scale — a permanent platform recognizing photographers whose work advances human dignity through the power of the photograph.
In official alignment with United Nations Human Rights, High Note Human Rights Photography brings together visionary photographers, journalists, artists, and institutions to elevate images that do more than document — works that bear witness, awaken conscience, and shape the cultural narrative around the most urgent human rights issues of our time.
Rather than rely on institutional gatekeeping, Photography 4 Humanity — High Note Global's photography pillar since 2018 — opens its annual global call to every photographer in the world: from professional photojournalists and emerging documentarians to the citizen witnesses whose images tell the human story behind the headlines. Winning works receive the High Note Global Prize in Photography, exhibited each Human Rights Day at United Nations Headquarters in New York and online at UN.org — reaching audiences worldwide.
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Csaba Kőrösi, President of the UN General Assembly tours High Note Photo Exhibit on UN Human Rights Day
PAST RECIPIENTS
INCLUDE:
2025
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Sourav Das
Title: In Jharia’s Fire, Both Earth and Mothers Weep
Description: "Amid the burning coalfields of Jharia, an elderly woman collapses in grief. Her tears rise through the smoke, echoing the silence of lives lost and forgotten in the flames.”
Location: Jharia, India
2024
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Viviane Rakotoarivony
Title: Ambalakondro, Devastated by Cyclone Freddy
Description: “In the village of Ambalakondro, Cyclone Freddy devastated 90% of the homes, leaving these residents to take refuge beneath a fragment of their roof.”
Location: Mananjary, Madagascar
2023
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Kristina Varaksina
Title: The Seashore is No Longer Here
Description: ”School girls stand in an abandoned seaport town next to an installation showing where the Aral Sea used to come."
Location: Karakalpakstan, Uzbekistan
2022
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Masood Sarwer
Title: The Endless Dance of Erosion
Description: “Last week my wife died due to cardiac arrest and the following week we started dismantling our house when we heard the Ganges started eroding the land again.”
Location: Malda, West Bengal, India
2021
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Apratim Pal
Title: A Thirsty Earth
Description: Women searching for water because they do not have sufficient sources of water for daily use due to severe droughts.
Location: West Bengal, India
2020
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Anindito Mukherjee
Title: Last Rites
Description: Those who lost their lives to the Coronavirus were not allowed to have a final goodbye from their loved ones, and were buried by contracted municipal workers.
Location: New Delhi, India
2019
HIGH NOTE GLOBAL PRIZE
Recipient: Sameer Al-Doumy
Title: Coffee Break
Description: “A married couple drink coffee in the remains of their home in Souma.”
Location: Syria
