Apes, toilets, conflicts and cowboys: Sony World Photography awards – in pictures

Memories of Dust: Alex Bex (Third place, documentary projects)

Memories of Dust is a long-term project that explores traditional masculinity in the photographer’s home state of Texas, by examining the cowboy and his place in a fast-changing society. The cowboy is a longstanding symbol of North America, and is romanticised as a ‘real man’, the strong, silent type, lonesome, self-reliant and emotionally distant. As Alex Bex travelled across Texas, spending time on ranches, he learned about the realities, routines and hardships of the cowboy, contrasting them with cultural myth