Indian photographer Amit Madheshiya has been named ‘Arts and Culture Photographer of the Year’ at the prestigious Sony World Photography Awards 2011.

Mumbai-based Madheshiya was one of 13 professional category winners presented with an award held at the ceremony at the Odeon in Leicester Square, London, last night.

His winning series of photographs, entitled People Watching Cinema at the Nomadic Talkies, was shot in the remote villages of Maharashtra. It documents people attending nighttime film screenings held by a travelling cinema.

The nomadic cinemas travel to the villages, which are located far from fixed-site theatres, once a year and show an eclectic mix of films. The Sony World Photography Awards is the world’s largest and most comprehensive photography competition.

Amit Madheshiya works as an independent photographer. For his work on the nomadic cinemas he received an Arts Research Grant from the India Foundation for the Arts, a fellowship from the Cluster of Excellence at Heidelberg University and the Goethe Institute 50 Year Anniversary Grant.

In 2009, his vibrant and thoughtful images on the project won the Sony World Photography Award for Arts and Entertainment, as well as the Grand Award in the Humanity Photo Awards. In the same year Madheshiya was also declared Emerging Photographer of the Year in India.

Argentinean photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg was named overall Photographer of the Year winning a USD 25,000 cash prize and Sony digital SLR equipment. His photographs offer a rare and insightful look into the lives of a community of islanders who live on the Parana River Delta in Argentina. All the winning images will be exhibited from 26 April to 22 May at Somerset House in London.

The exhibition captures a unique view of the world in 2010/11 as recorded through the lens of winning photographers. Student photographer Louis Boulet from Ecole Nationale Superieure Louis Lumiere, France, won the Student Focus award.

Louis was flown to London and received approximately 45,000 Euros worth of Sony digital imaging equipment for his school. Bruce Davidson received the Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award. Davidson, 77, has a career spanning more than half a century, and is one of America’s most distinguished photographers.

The winning images were selected from 53,223 Professional category submissions and 51,878 Open category photography submissions from 162 countries. Created by the World Photography Organisation, the World Photography Awards, sponsored by Sony, launched in 2007.