Andrea Bettancini Wins URBAN Press Award 2025 with The Sound of Silence
We are pleased to announce that Andrea Bettancini, with his project The Sound of Silence, is the winner of the URBAN Press Award 2025.
The prize is awarded by a jury composed of representatives from some of the most influential photography and visual culture publications, Media Partners of the URBAN Photo Awards:
- Bob Patterson, Street Photography Magazine
- Cyrielle Gendron, PHOTO.fr
- Federica Berzioli, IL FOTOGRAFO
- James Artaius, Digital Camera World
- Nora Lalle, Pamplemousse Magazine
- Philippe Litzler, OPENEYE
- SuzAnne Steben, The Photographic Journal
- Tomasz Trzebiatowski, FRAMES
The Sound of Silence listens to the quiet hidden within the clamour. In this series, the familiar din of the streets gives way to something more intimate and introspective: an invisible, everyday hum that takes shape through isolated presences, gazes, and subtle visual rhythms. The project unfolds as a flow of images—fragments of a visual thought suspended between harmony and dissonance, proximity and distance. Bettancini captures not the spectacle of the masses, but the pause, the breath, the stillness. His lens doesn’t follow noise; it traces its echo.
With this recognition, The Sound of Silence joins a growing collection of award-winning projects that embody the mission of URBAN: to explore the human landscape through photography that is both immediate and reflective.
About the author: Andrea Bettancini
All my education was focused on creativity, starting with art school, and then I pursued the fashion department at IED in Milan. I worked as a designer in Milan for various clothing brands and collaborated with an architecture magazine of the Mondadori group.
Photography has always been a passion of mine, ever since the days of analog photography with nights spent in the darkroom among the basins of acids.
I have a preference for reportage, street photography, and photographic storytelling in general, exploring the fusion and contamination of images to develop a non-analytical visual language.
My achievements include being a shortlist in the Sony Awards 2022 professional documentary section, winning the ND Awards 2022 in the long exposures category, and being a finalist in the URBAN Photo Awards 2022/2023 (portfolio) and the World Water Day competitions in 2019 and 2022. I was also the winner of the All About Photo The Mind’s Eye 2023 and a finalist in the Gomma Black & White Awards 2023, with the final results still pending. Furthermore, I have been recognized as the best author at the main Italian FIAF competitions, including Follonica, Golden chip, Cameri, Murlo, and Brugine.
Instagram: @andreabettancini
