The prestigious photographer of the year title has been awarded to Juliette Pavy for her series Spiralkampagnen: Forced Contraception and Unintended Sterilisation of Greenlandic Women. Pavy was selected from the 10 winners in the professional category; she receives a $25,000 prize, Sony equipment, and the opportunity to present a new body of work at the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 exhibition
• Gallery – the Sony World Photography awards
Juliette Pavy’s documentary series explores the severe and lasting impacts of an involuntary birth control campaign led by Danish authorities in Greenland in the 1960s and 1970s. It examines the Spiralkampagnen, in which several thousand Inuit women and girls, some as young as 12 years old, had intrauterine devices implanted without their consent. The project traces the programme’s origins through to the present day, including the ongoing investigation by the Danish government.
Placing the victims’ perspectives at the forefront, the narrative structure of Pavy’s project is shaped by difficult and important reflections on the collective trauma experienced by a community. The series uses a variety of photographic formats, from situating shots of the city of Nuuk and its clinical spaces to X-ray imagery and archive photographs of the young women involved, alongside recent portraits of victims, doctors who worked in Greenland during and after the programme, and the Danish parliamentarian investigating the Spiralkampagnen today.
Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, is located on the west coast and has a population of about 19,000.
