On November 12, 2025, the HUAWEI XMAGE Awards 2025 Ceremony & Annual Exhibition, “The World, You and Me,” jointly presented by HUAWEI XMAGE and UCCA Lab under UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, is unveiled at Grand Palais in Paris. As an official project of Paris Photo 2025, the exhibition will be open to the public from November 13 to November 16.

Founded in 1997, Paris Photo is one of the world’s most established and influential photography fairs, drawing over one hundred thousand professionals and enthusiasts each year. The Grand Palais has thus become a true barometer of global photographic discourse, with this exhibition marking the third collaboration between Huawei and UCCA Lab at the venue In 2018 and 2019, the two partners jointly presented mobile photography at Paris Photo for two consecutive years—pioneering the inclusion of smartphone imagery on the contemporary art stage. From the “Next-Image Awards” to today’s “XMAGE Awards,” this evolving partnership has not only cemented an academic foundation for Huawei’s ongoing exploration in imagery, but also signifies a profound transformation of Huawei’s mobile photography from a “technological phenomenon” to a “cultural narrative.”

For this year’s Paris Photo, Huawei once again partnered with UCCA Lab to present the shortlisted works of the 2025 HUAWEI XMAGE Awards “XMAGE 100,” alongside outstanding pieces created by students from China and France for the HUAWEI XMAGE Young Creators Program, at the Grand Palais in Paris. Nearly 200 images, selected from 743,634 submissions across 78 countries and regions, form a global dialogue with mobile cameras. Through the interplay of smartphone lenses and the gaze of viewers, the exhibition explores  the contemporary possibilities of mobile imagery within both the academic and market contexts of Paris Photo as well as the warmth of the photography medium.

Mobile photography has woven the art of image-making into the fabric of everyday life. By dismantling the technical barriers that once confined creative expression, it has democratized visual storytelling, transforming the global circulation of images into a dynamic platform for cross-cultural dialogue. As Huawei’s exclusive photography brand and initiative, XMAGE continues to craft powerful visual experiences based on advanced software, hardware, devices, cloud capabilities, and a distinct aesthetic vision. Individuals now have the means to share their unique narratives through their own images, and contribute to defining new cultural values—together participating in the transformative power of imagery.

As the Huawei platform for smartphone photographic excellence, XMAGE Awards is the window through which Huawei celebrate amazing photos and videos captured on Huawei devices from around the world. It empowers mobile photographers to craft and share breathtaking visuals that demonstrate artistry from different perspectives, uniting us all in celebrating the power of image. Mobile photography has redefined how people engage with the world, continuously inspiring creativity while deepening mutual understanding through viewing and dialogue. This reciprocal, participatory practice of image-making continues to expand the boundaries of “seeing”—a capability empowered by as well as a gesture of goodwill from our era.

With the theme “The World, You and Me,” the  HUAWEI XMAGE Awards 2025 Ceremony & Annual Exhibition invites us on a journey that inspires a dialogue between exploring the world and expressing the self. It calls upon us to move beyond fleeting perceptions toward a deeper, more genuine sense of “seeing”—we document, and are also profoundly moved by the documentation made by others. Through XMAGE, mobile imaging technology evolves into a medium for heartwarming connection, enabling us to better perceive the world, and more gently, to see one another.

This year’s exhibition unfolds across three thematic sections: “I Capture, Therefore I Am,” “The Constructed & the Perceived,” and “In Their Own Words.” At the entrance, Huang Liyong’s Street Theater hangs prominently on the preface wall. In this work, the street, bathed in colors and lights, becomes a grand stage where everyone is an impromptu protagonist—setting the tone for an exhibition that is open, immersive, and charged with dramatic tension.

I Capture, Therefore I Am

Mobile photography reduces the vastness of the world into particles of data flowing in the palms of our hands. Each shutter click becomes a delicate exploration of its texture. From blurred to ultra-clear, from fleeting moments to flowing slices, each particle of the world carries a user’s perception and lived experience. These everyday images, when threaded into a bigger picture, become a visual metric for measuring our existence. The HUAWEI XMAGE Awards, held annually since 2017, has received over six million submissions to date. In this section, a looping multimedia installation serves as the vessel of this “galaxy of particles.” Folded aluminum panels present the XMAGE 100 shortlisted works as static photographs; metal refractions reveal shifting details with each footstep; and mirror reflections collapse the gaze of “you,” “me,” the photographer, and the viewer into a shared visual space, creating a real-time double exposure. Meanwhile, a matrix of tablets displays the shortlisted works in moving images, allowing the “particles” to diffuse outward, rippling and winding through the folds of time and space.

The Constructed & the Perceived

A (series of) photographic image is not only tangible evidence of reality, but also an open-ended enigma that cannot verify itself. It drifts ambiguously between fact and interpretation. Once released from the frozen moment, it can regain a vibrant context in new spaces of display—its interpretation open to the photographer, the subject, and the viewer alike. Between observation, understanding, imagination, and intent, what is constructed and what is perceived continually shape the very act of photographing. Against a backdrop in blue-to-yellow gradient, three pairs of dialogic works are placed in juxtaposition: a butterfly and a herd of galloping horses evoke the contrast between the microscopic and the monumental; an old woman opening a window and a child climbing skyward along a ladder trace a disparity in spatial scale; while a horn player and the breeze whispering through treetops insinuate the collision between sound and silence. Together, these visual pairings unfold layers of tension across the wall, reminding viewers that the meaning of an image always drifts between opposing poles. On the reverse side of the backdrop, Glimmer of Hope by Rhon Paolo C. Velarde delineates the silhouette of a figure in darkness with a beam of blue light, capturing a creeping anxiety from the fear and wonder when facing the unknown. Presented at the center of this section is the winner of the 2025 XMAGE Awards, Ethereal Lines, by Gheorghe Popa. From an arial view, the work captures the surreal curves and vivid color blocks on the toxic waters of the tailings lake at Geamăna. What first appears as abstract art, upon closer look, reveals both the sublime power of nature and the urgent realities of environmental degradation—an arresting juxtaposition of beauty and danger.

Another installation in this section comprises of multiple LED screens, unfolding through a layered arrangement of steps and platforms, forming a luminous field where the whole and the fragment respond to one another—where displacement and entanglement coexist. Within it, six image works are presented. When the full moon meets a streetlight, when the sky merges with the sea, images crystallize poetic instants of reality. Yet when a giant intrudes upon a miniature world, and the setting sun bathes the scene in both warmth and unease, the images open portals toward realms of the fantastical and the unknown. The installation transforms the theme “The Constructed & the Perceived” into a spatial meditation, suspends and intertwines artistic intent and audience perception, technological logic and human sensibility, each questioning and reflecting the other.

In Their Own Words

This section presents nine artworks in the form of lightboxes. Images imbued with narrative meaning constructs a space for imagination, one capable of expanding and transforming our perceived time and space, allowing the mind to wander into different worlds and life experiences. They suggest specific events, figures, and places, and is by nature continuous and contextual, unfolding in their own way within the flow of time. It is precisely this narrative power that stirs our emotions, connecting us to another gaze, another gesture, another scene—letting us feel joy and playfulness, the warmth of sunlight, or the surge of flowing water. From the Polish girl sprinting joyfully through a radiant summer day, to the gentle child in Yining’s old town cradling a lamb in her arms, to the lovers nestled together outside the Alhambra at dusk beside a dozing cat—love and poetry permeate the human world, unconfined and ever flowing.

The entrance and exit of this section are each adorned with a winning piece of the 2025 HUAWEI XMAGE Award, framing a “beginning and end” that resonates with the “In Their Own Words” narrative. Chen Guanhong’s Origin of Skiing positions the camera deep within the ice and snow of Altay, capturing the history and development of the place where humans first started skiing: inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage, Sulanbek personally crafts a traditional fur ski, the chana, for his granddaughter Yelena, allowing the 12,000-year-old skiing figures etched into Altay’s ancient cliffs to come alive in the present day—here, snow and lineage intertwine in the eternity of time. On the other hand, Mehmet Emin Coruş’s New Life pauses in the golden glow of the exit: as the sun sets, a farmer gently holds a newborn calf, while the mother instinctively follows close behind. Still damp from birth, the calf receives its first embrace through the gaze of maternal care. These two works are stark contrasts with each other, one cold and the other warm, but both tell the story of “continuity” in the same quiet tone: in the flow of time where legacy and life converge, images no longer simply capture—they whisper to tomorrow: the story unfolds still, and love never fades.

The exhibition’s labyrinth of light and shadow also incorporates a selection of works from the HUAWEI XMAGE Young Photographers Program. Launched earlier in 2025, the program invites young photographers from diverse cultural backgrounds to respond to a shared theme, offering fresh perspectives that reflect the vitality of cultural exchange and the resonance of pluralistic thinking. Yu Dian from China presents Fragments, in which hurried pedestrians on city streets are sliced into a series of dispersed, continuous puzzle-like pieces. The flowing “fragments” question whether life is about piecing together the self or perpetually losing it, and whether our trajectories move linearly forward or circulate in a fated loop, constructing an ongoing echo within the mind. From France, Mélanie Rodriguez’s CHAIR-NUMERIQUE employs artificial intelligence to erase all figures from a photograph of a gathering of friends—the scene is instantly stripped of identity and memory; pixels lose their referential function and become a pure sensory construction, highlighting how anonymity in the digital era reshapes collective memory. One work is tangible, the other ethereal; one cyclical, the other vacant. Together, they inscribe the “youthful gaze” into the same stream of inquiry: when technology can so easily add or erase reality, young photographers use their cameras to probe “What remains that cannot be removed?”

On November 12, as autumn twilight descended over Paris, the Grand Palais was illuminated for the grand opening of the HUAWEI XMAGE Awards 2025 Ceremony & Annual Exhibition—“The World, You and Me.” The event paid tribute to mobile image creators from around the world and celebrated the winners of this year’s competition. Following the ceremony, guests and attendees moved to Huawei’s exhibition space and the clock tower terrace at the Grand Palais for the XMAGE 2025 cocktail reception and exhibition. Amidst the interplay of light and shadow, the guests joined guided tours through the exhibition’s three thematic sections—“I Capture, Therefore I Am,” “The Constructed & the Perceived,” and “In Their Own Words”—experiencing a Parisian night lighted up by the art of mobile photography beneath the Grand Palais’s historic dome.

The following day, the XMAGE “Gazes Meet in Paris” Image Art Journey commenced as scheduled. Partnering with four renowned photography and art institutions, Huawei guided participants along four themed routes through the city—combining urban exploration with creative dialogue—with a visit to Huawei’s Paris flagship store, savoring the uniqueness of this “city salon.” That evening, the XMAGE Aesthetics Cocktail & Dialogue took place at Les Ombres, the rooftop restaurant of the Musée du Quai Branly. In an atmosphere of ease and inspiration, guests exchanged ideas under the theme “The Age of AI: The Future Path of Photography,” delving into the value of photography in contemporary culture and its evolving possibilities in the future. The conversations lingered well into the night, as light, imagery, and the pulse of Paris converged in quiet, resonant harmony.

Mobile imagery places the power of creation in the hands of every individual. Through the fusion of technology and art, it drives the democratization and diversification of visual expression. Each mobile photograph not only records the grains of the world and the textures of everyday life, but also becomes a bridge—transcending boundaries of culture, language, and geography. These images, interwoven in light and shadow, tell stories from diverse perspectives and backgrounds, fostering deeper connections through the mutual act of seeing and being seen. This reciprocal, participatory practice of image-making expands the very boundaries of perception and injects new vitality into contemporary visual culture. The Huawei XMAGE Awards remains committed to an open and inclusive vision—encouraging more creators to connect, narrate, and see the world through images, and through them, to see one another.