2025 Huawei XMAGE Awards Ceremony and Annual Exhibition Kicks Off in Paris
The 2025 Huawei XMAGE Awards Ceremony and The World, You and Me Annual Imaging Exhibition opened on 12 November at the Grand Palais in Paris. The event, held in partnership with Paris Photo—one of the world’s leading photography showcases—brought together prominent creators, media professionals, industry figures, and photography enthusiasts.
Kevin Ho, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group, highlighted the role of the XMAGE platform in reshaping visual storytelling. “Through XMAGE, we can use the power of technology and images to better perceive the world, and more gently, to see one another,” he said.
Founded in 1997, Paris Photo attracts more than 100,000 visitors each year. The 2025 edition marks the third collaboration between Paris Photo and Huawei following previous partnerships in 2018 and 2019, and the first since Huawei introduced its XMAGE brand—an evolution from imaging technology to a broader cultural and artistic narrative.
This year’s exhibition, themed “The World, You and Me,” presents works by creators who interpret and reimagine their surroundings. The exhibition features three zones: “I Capture, Therefore I Am,” “The Constructed, The Perceived,” and “In Their Own Words,” each designed to immerse visitors in visual storytelling and personal perspective. The event also serves as a global platform for artistic exchange, consistent with XMAGE’s mission to connect photographers and innovators worldwide.
The 2025 XMAGE competition drew more than 743,000 submissions from users across 78 countries and regions. The top “XMAGE 100” images, selected without traditional category divisions, include three Grand Prize winners whose works were highlighted at the ceremony.
Grand Prize Winning Works
Ethereal Lines
Judges’ comments: The photograph showcases the expanding frontier of mobile photography. Judges described it as a fusion of advanced optics and computational imaging, noting that premium smartphones have become “spaceships” enabling creative exploration across macro and micro worlds.
New Life
Judges’ comments: Described as powerful in its simplicity, the image captures a mother, newborn calf, and farmer in a moment of everyday beauty. The judges praised the authenticity and depth of meaning achieved without the use of photographic tricks.
Origin of Skiing
Judges’ comments: The panel highlighted the emotional resonance of the scene, featuring a child in traditional Altay clothing against a snowy landscape. The photographer’s restraint allows the subject’s personality and story to emerge naturally.
Huawei stated that the XMAGE platform continues to redefine photography from an act of “seeing” to a deeper experience of “perceiving,” encouraging connections through visual narratives. As the company noted, today’s images are no longer passive representations but portals into broader worlds of understanding and imagination.
