The 2025 HUAWEI XMAGE Awards Ceremony and “The World, You and Me” Annual Imaging Exhibition was held this week at the Grand Palais in Paris. The event, jointly hosted with Paris Photo, one of the most world’s largest international art fairs dedicated to photography, drew attention from a host of accomplished creators, media, industry leaders, and photography enthusiasts.
Kevin Ho, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said of the event: ” Through XMAGE, we can use the power of technology and images to better perceive the world, and more gently, to see one another.”
Founded in 1997, the annual Paris Photo event regularly attracts over 100,000 attendees. This year’s exhibition represents the third time (originally in 2018 and 2019) that Paris Photo and Huawei have collaborated to introduce mobile photography to the global art scene, and the first since the company unveiled its genre-defining XMAGE brand that signalled a meaningful shift from technical innovation to creative expression and storytelling.
This year’s exhibition is based on the theme “The World, You and Me” and showcases the works of talented creators and how they are perceiving, recreating, and interpreting the world around them. It also plays host to three exhibition areas, titled “I Capture, Therefore I Am”, ” The Constructed, The Perceived”, and “In Their Own Words.” Each have been carefully curated to reflect the competition’s emphasis on visual immersion.
All of the works on display delve into the idea of reimaging the relationship between individuals, their unique perspectives, and the visual worlds they inhabit. In addition to being one of the top photography exhibitions, the event is a major drawcard for leaders in global photography, providing the perfect backdrop for networking, relationship building, and idea sharing. This lends itself to the very ethos of Huawei XMAGE as it aims to serve as a global platform facilitating artistic exchange for all.
This year’s competition attracted over 743,000 submissions from users in 78 countries/regions. The “XMAGE 100” showcases the competition’s most outstanding images, selected without traditional categories. From this group, three Grand Prize Winners of the Year were chosen. The works are shown below with the judging panel’s comments (in no particular order).
According to Alex, CMO of Huawei Consumer Business Group: “Let’s continue to capture, share, and inspire the world through XMAGE.”
Ethereal Lines
Judges’ comments: “Outstanding photographers are exploring uncharted territories of photography with high-end smartphones. The evolution of mobile technology is transforming the way we view the world. A premium smartphone has become a “spaceship” to infinite possibilities. This is a complex interplay of optics and algorithmic computation. Explorers move freely between the macro and micro worlds, transitioning from “seeing” to “insight.” And thus, a fascinating unknown emerges in the most unexpected moments.”
New Life
Judges’ comments: “This concise, straightforward photo shows the entire cycle of life, with the mother, the newborn calf, and the farmer who probably gave no thought to the uniqueness of this scene. It is the ordinary nature of this image that makes it so extraordinary. The photographer employs no special tricks, simply capturing an image of extraordinary depth and meaning as it occurs.”
Origin of Skiing
Judges’ comments: “This picture captures the gaze present between two people who encounter each other. The child is standing on the snowy plain, but basking in the sun, dressed in traditional Altay clothing. The photographer shows remarkable restraint, not projecting their own feelings on to the image, but rather, letting the child’s personality shine through.”
Through these images and countless others, HUAWEI XMAGE is inspiring a paradigm shift in photography from “seeing” to “perceiving” our world, forging connection in unexpected places. Now that pictures are no longer images to be passively viewed, but rather, windows to what surrounds us, each touch of the shutter opens up a world of possibility.
