Authorial Jury: Paolo Verzone and Denis Curti Protagonists of URBAN 2025

This year’s edition of the URBAN Photo Awards has officially begun and promises to be full of new features and prestigious participants. There is already great anticipation for the next edition of the Trieste Photo Days, scheduled for October 24, 25, and 26, 2025.

This year, the renowned photographer Paolo Verzone will not only be involved as a judge for the selection of the best Single Photos but also as a protagonist of one of the festival’s culminating moments.

Verzone, a prominent figure in contemporary photography, will have the significant role of selecting the “Photographer of the Year”. This prestigious recognition will be awarded to one of the four talented photographers who have distinguished themselves as first-place winners in the Single Photos category, in the respective thematic areas of the URBAN competition: Streets, People, Spaces, and Creative.

The announcement of the “Photographer of the Year” will take place during the awards ceremony, an unmissable event that will be held in the heart of the Trieste Photo Days.

In parallel, for the section dedicated to the Book Award and for the Patricia D. Richards Legacy Award, the jury will be presided over by Denis Curti, an authoritative name in the world of photography who boasts solid experience as an artistic director, publisher, and curator, ready to select the most deserving publishing project.

The presence of Paolo Verzone and Denis Curti once again underscores the importance and quality not only of the international URBAN Photo Awards, which, now in its sixteenth edition, can boast prominent guests every year; but also of the Trieste Photo Days, which will see Verzone and Curti present at the festival: it confirms itself as a fundamental event for photography enthusiasts and professionals at an international level.

All that remains is to eagerly await the awards ceremony to discover who will win the title of “Photographer of the Year” 2025 under the authoritative judgment of Paolo Verzone.

Paolo Verzone

For almost 30 years, Paolo has photographed the world around him. Over the past three decades, he has completed several long-term projects: a series of portraits of Europeans on the beach, Seeuropeans (1994 / 2002), and the Moscow Project (1991 / 2001 / 2011 / 2021), three decades of work on Muscovites. With his project Cadets of the main European military academies, begun in 2009 and completed in 2014, Paolo Verzone maps contemporary Europe through a segment of its youth.

Since 2009, Paolo Verzone has been working in the Arctic, following scientific themes and environmental subjects. He collaborates with magazines such as National Geographic, Newsweek, Le Monde, The Independent, Sunday Times, Libération, Vanity Fair, Geo, GQ, Amica, Rolling Stone, Marie Claire, Mare, Courrier International, Das Magazin. Paolo Verzone was awarded the World Press Photo in 2000, 2009, and 2015, and the Picture of the Year International in 2023. His photographs are part of several collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the National Institute for Graphics in Rome. Paolo has been a Canon Ambassador since 2017. Since 2024, he has been a National Geographic Explorer.

Denis Curti

Denis Curti, a prominent name in the world of photography, holds numerous prestigious roles: he is the artistic director of Le Stanze della Fotografia in Venice; Head of the photography sector for Marsilio Editore; director and founder of STILL, a photography gallery based in Milan; artistic director of the Capri Photography Festival; artistic director of the Montefano Photography Festival: Premio Ghergo; director of the online publication Black Camera; and artistic director of Deloitte’s PhotoGrant, whose Open Call 2025 is currently open for registration:

https://deloittephotogrant.com/contests/open-call-2025/

From 2018 to 2022, Curti was the director of the monthly magazine IL FOTOGRAFO. Prior to this role, from 2005 to 2014, he was the director of Contrasto – Milan and vice president of 1 the Forma Foundation in Milan.