Paris5 Apr 2025

The third Urban Photo Race in Paris took place on Saturday 5 April 2025, in the year UPR turned fifteen. When the date was chosen in winter nobody could know that the weather would break records: not one cloud, a bright blue sky and almost summer temperatures with a light wind.

The race started on the Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris, with the welcome speech and soap bubbles rising into the sky for the anniversary. With the first two themes, Complices à 4 pattes (four-legged companions) and Moment de pause (time for a break), racers went to the 13th arrondissement and Station F, a railway building from the 1920s that is now one of the largest start-up campuses in the world. There the third theme, À travers (seen through), was revealed, and in the large food hall a pug on a flowered carpet was a real four-legged companion.

The next checkpoint was the open-air sculpture museum on the Seine, between sculptures, trees in flower and hundreds of Parisians in the sun, where the last theme was revealed: Transport. Racers crossed the Seine again, east to Ground Control, an old postal sorting hall that is now a cultural space with food stalls and bars, and the race ended there with cold beers and colourful cocktails under a 'tequila sunset' sky.

The race was organised by the Paris team, Annette Schwichtenberg, Frederic Anterion and Gilles Hanauer of the Photo Club Paris Val-de-Bièvre, with Sandrine Bouillon.

The winners

Nicolas Morais won Best Photographer and the theme Transport, ahead of Elisabeth Euvrard and Clara Serena Morales. Complices à 4 pattes went to Florence Vahl and À travers to Bénédicte Lejeune, and Moment de pause to two photographers, Elisabeth Euvrard and Marie Laure Laherre. Maria Mosconi chose Bénédicte Lejeune as her favourite, Denis Meyer chose Elisabeth Euvrard and Philippe Blayo chose Fernando Coelho.