Dubai photographer's lockdown portrait wins National Award for Sony World Photography Awards 2021

The awards received more than 100,000 submissions from over 50 countries this year

'Masquerade III' won Mireia Vilaplana, a photographer living in the UAE, the National Awards this year. The artist said of her work: 'This image is part of a series shot during the 2020 lockdown... [it is] a visual exploration of our true selves, it aims to explore photography’s particular ability to describe a historical moment in a conceptual form.' Mireia Vilaplana

This photograph by Yoganathan Yoke of a long-tailed macaque, also known as the crab-eating macaque, was taken in the mangrove forest of Kuala Gula, Perak. 'I went there one evening, hoping to photograph birds or snakes, when I saw a group of macaques foraging in the mud for their last meal of the day. A ray of light from the sunset fell on this macaque just as it looked up. I felt it looked like a gesture of hope for the future,' said photographer Yoke in a statement.

Dunes and mountains captured in Death Valley, captured by Patrick Mueller. The image is the winning entry for the US

Photographer Yu-Liang Chueh said of this image: 'For the people of Taitung in Taiwan, the Bombing of Master Handan is the highlight of the annual Lantern Festival; it’s a cultural ritual I attend every year. While most spectators concentrated on the sedan chair, I noticed the firecracker thrower below, with the scene looking just like a battlefield.'

Raphael Barbar from Switzerland took this picture from the Saleve, a mountain near Geneva, just as a storm was brewing.

Prajwal Bhattarai captures a group of men playing volleyball in the mountains of Nepal, where volleyball is the national sport.

Abdelhamid Fawzy Tahoun from Egypt shows a performer of tanoura, an Egyptian dance that has spiritual origins in Sufism.

A father and son catch fish in the early morning in Myanmar in this photograph by Min Min Zaw.

Naif Albugami attempts to capture the 'despair' of life amid the pandemic in this winning entry from Saudi Arabia.

Young sisters captured by Hardijanto Budyman from Indonesia.

'This photograph is a story of first times. The first time I shot my dear friend Leo, that I only had met once in my life about 10 years ago. The first time I went outside after three months. The first friend I met after the lockdown...,' wrote Lauriane Bieber, the National Awards winner for France.

TItled 'Autumn Snake', this aerial photograph shows mountain road in Hakone, Japan. It was taken by Hiroki Nose, who was awarded second place in the National Awards for Japan.

A monochrome portrait of a girl with a painted face mask and a steely expression has become the winning image for the UAE in the National Award for Sony World Photography Awards 2021.

Shot by Barcelona-born photographer Mireia Vilaplana, who lives in Dubai, the image features Clara, her 9-year-old daughter, and belongs to a series titled Masquerade.

Conceptualised by Vilaplana as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the photo project is what she describes as a "visual exploration of our true selves". She recruited her twin children as her subjects, donning them in masks made of leaves, twigs and even toilet paper. The entire series was shot in their Dubai garden during lockdown.

“Face masks have become, without a doubt, the symbol of the global pandemic affecting us all in 2020,” the photographer said in a statement. “This photographic series explores the symbolism of masks through the use of photography’s particular ability to describe an historical moment in a conceptual form.”

Scroll through the gallery above to see the other winners of the National Awards 2021.

Vilaplana has been a Dubai resident since 2016. A self-taught photographer, she specialises in black-and-white photography and portraiture. Her images of domestic scenes and quotidian life often play with deep contrasts and shadow. “Through mundane, everyday moments, I like to incite and push the viewers on an exploratory journey of their own emotions,” she said.

Her image was selected from more than 165,000 submissions to the Open competition, in which Vilaplana’s work was entered into the portraiture category.

Part of the Sony World Photography Awards, the National Awards programme was developed by the World Photography Organisation and Sony to highlight photographers from around the globe. It received submissions from more than 50 countries this year.

Other National Awards 2021 winners include Prajwal Bhattarai, who has captured a volleyball game in the mountains of Nepal; Patrick Mueller, an American photographer whose unusual image of a sand dune and mountains was taken in Death Valley; and Saudi photographer Naif Albugami, whose highly stylised photo shoot features a man in silvery suit atop a broken-down car.

The overall winners in remaining competitions of Student, Youth, Open and Professional categories of the Sony World Photography Awards 2021 will be announced in April.