© Andrea Bettancini
Andrea Bettancini (Italy) is a documentary and street photographer with a background in art and fashion design from IED Milan. A former designer and collaborator with Mondadori Group, he later turned his focus fully to photography, a passion dating back to his analog darkroom days.
His work centers on reportage, street photography, and visual storytelling, blending images into a non-analytical language. Bettancini has been recognized internationally: shortlisted at the Sony Awards 2022, winner of the ND Awards 2022 (long exposure), finalist at the Urban Photo Awards 2022/2023, the World Water Day contests (2019, 2022), and winner of All About Photo – The Mind’s Eye (2023).
In 2025, his project The Sound of Silence received the URBAN Press Award, highlighting his ability to reveal silence within urban chaos.
The winning project – The Sound of Silence
“In The Sound of Silence (extended cut), Andrea Bettancini listens for silence within the noise, presenting a lateral, almost whispered vision of India. Background sounds, ordinary, invisible and intimate, take shape through faces, gestures, voids and pauses.
The series unfolds as a flow of images, fragments of visual thought balanced between harmony and dissonance, distance and closeness, where isolated encounters emerge as suspended moments, breaking away from the mass to become singular presences. It is an India of silence, often hidden behind the clamor.
This body of work becomes a journey into echoes, where the gaze rests not on what is revealed but on what remains. Light traverses an oneiric India of almost unreal apparitions, oscillating between dream and memory, transforming the everyday into vision. In this suspended dimension, reality blurs and unveils a hidden beauty that resonates in what is left unspoken.”
Recent Awards and Exhibitions
- 2025: Won the URBAN Press Award for the project The Sound of Silence.
- 2023: 4th place at the All About Photo Awards; Honorable Mention at the MonoVisions Awards for Wooden Dragon.
- 2022: Shortlisted at the Sony World Photography Awards (Professional, Documentary Projects) for Without a homeland – the contended land; Finalist at the URBAN Photo Awards (Projects & Portfolios).
- 2021: 1st Place at the ND Awards (Non-Professional, Special: Long Exposure) for The Wooden Dragon.
URBAN Press Award 2025 Committee
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
