Portrait of Britain Vol. 8 Shortlist © Rebecca Zephyr Thomas
Portrait of Britain returns to JCDecaux UK digital screens nationwide with stories of strength and community from across the country
From 12 January until early February, high streets, airports and shopping centres across the UK will transform into a national art gallery. Portrait of Britain Vol. 8, a British Journal of Photography award, presented in partnership with JCDecaux UK, brings 100 winning portraits to digital screens throughout the country, reaffirming the award’s commitment to public space, public attention and public storytelling on an unrivalled scale. The images were selected from thousands submitted which will now be part of Britain’s biggest annual photography exhibition.
Portrait of Britain was launched in June 2016 as a way to bring together the many faces that comprise modern Britain. The resulting images can be encountered in places of communal gathering on JCDecaux UK’s nationwide network of digital advertising screens.
Photography still has the power to make statements
– Dennis Morris, Photographer and Portrait of Britain Vol. 8 Judge
This year’s 100-strong collection is a reminder that the most compelling stories of Britain do not emerge from geography or ideology but from the extraordinary variety of people who inhabit it. These portraits include veterans, scientists, fishmongers, ballerinas, and farmers. Stories of lives lived from Glastonbury to Glencoe, Royal Festival Hall to Barras Market.
These sensibilities run throughout the winning works, proving that “photography still has the power to make statements”, remarks Dennis Morris, one of this year’s judges, alongside Sophie Parker, Dennis Morris, Claire Rees, Mick Moore, Alice Zoo, Vivienne Gamble, and Turner Prize 2025 nominee, Rene Matić.
The images featured in this year’s Volume capture the playful tone of daily life and tender humour in Britain. One such image shows Amaya, seven years old, seated in what looks like an outdoor living room: a worn sofa, a lamp, a side table, a rug, even a handmade wooden window frame complete with net curtains, photographed by Alex Elton-Wall. This was The Lydbrook Lounge, a fly-tipped sofa that spontaneously evolved into a village-wide art installation after residents began adding objects around it.
As the photographer continued to make portraits of neighbours on the sofa – 170 in total – the project went viral, reaching national and international media. Amaya, photographed in the early days of the unfolding spectacle, remembers simply that “it was really funny when everyone was getting their pictures taken on the old sofa”. The gentle portrait captures the spirit of a community who found joy in something once discarded.
Some portraits draw attention to forms of work often hidden from public view. One image, photographed inside the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, shows scientists Marco Schioppo and Adam Parke monitoring one of the ultrastable lasers used in next-generation optical atomic clocks. These systems produce the most stable light frequencies in the UK and may soon redefine the SI unit of time, enabling technologies far beyond current capabilities.
One of the selected portraits by Isaac Qureshi features his wife’s experience with alopecia, a return of his portrait featured in Portrait of Britain Volume 6. This portrait led Qureshi on a year-long journey of meeting others with the condition, which culminated in his True Crowns series. “Some time has passed now since Katherine lost her hair, and so she wanted to show some playfulness and humour in celebration of the acceptance that has now come to her,” he says.
Elsewhere, Jounaid by photographer Jaiyana Chelikha confronts the realities of second-generation immigrants in the UK. The subject – half Moroccan, half French, but born and raised in the UK – stands against a sweep of Dartmoor National Park moorland, a landscape often mythologised as emblematic of ‘Britishness’. But his gandoura, worn over contemporary streetwear, unsettles the simplicity of that narrative. The styling, layered and fluid, mirrors the layered and fluid nature of his identity.
Chelikha recalls how often the young man’s identity felt uncertain, despite spending his life in the UK. “I wanted the portrait to reflect that feeling,” the photographer says. “The question ‘go back to where?’ becomes absurd when a person’s life is formed in multiple places at once. The landscape and garment together tell a truer story.” Rather than presenting belonging as a fixed point, the image reframes it as something lived, negotiated, and continuously redefined.
Another portrait centres on Liela, whose life has bridged Sudan and the UK. Born and educated in Sudan, she settled in London in 1990 and spent decades building networks of care: chairing the You Are Not Alone community organisation, leading the Sudanese Women’s Union UK, serving on several Black and Minority Ethnic health forums, and shaping grassroots support structures long before formal institutions recognised their necessity.
In 2023, while visiting Sudan, she was unexpectedly caught up in conflict. Her return to London, after an exhausting and perilous journey, infuses the portrait, shot by Adam Docker, with resilience. The photograph does not sensationalise her hardships and instead honours the continuity of her work and the persistence of her presence.
The cover of this year’s accompanying book, published in partnership with WePresent, the arts platform of WeTransfer, features Bimini Bon-Boulash, photographed by Jennifer Forward-Hayter backstage at Mighty Hoopla, Europe’s largest LGBTQIA+ festival.
Captured moments before stepping onstage, Bimini radiates a composed readiness. The portrait encapsulates the fight not only to celebrate queer culture, but to keep it visible and rooted in the communities that built it.
As the Portrait of Britain Vol 8 images light up public digital screens throughout January and into February, they offer a living, shifting record not of Britain, and of the people whose lives render the country real. This year’s winning images ask viewers not to celebrate a mythic nation and instead recognise the humanity that surrounds them every day.
Portrait of Britain vol. 7 is exhibited nationwide on JCDecaux UK digital screens from 12 January 2026
The Portrait of Britain Vol. 8 Book (sponsored by WePresent, the arts platform of WeTransfer) is available to purchase