
Tag: Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize


When Covid-19 hit, the prestigious portrait prize decided to migrate online. Here, the National Portrait Gallery’s senior curator explains why, and how, they did it

The LA-based photographer was presented with the £15,000 prize at the awards ceremony at the National Portrait Gallery, London, this evening

Kovi Konowiecki began his professional life playing football in Europe. He turned to photography to…

Alice Mann is a South Africa-born, London-based photographer, who was awarded the prestigious Taylor Wessing…

Alice Mann has won the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2018 with a set of four images of South African drum majorettes – the first time the award has gone to a series not a single shot.
Mann’s photographs show five young girls from Cape Town dressed as ‘drummies’ – a popular hobby for children from some of South Africa’s most disadvantaged communities. Mann, who is now based in London but originally from South Africa, spent three months photographing drum majorettes, and says her winning portraits come from a much larger series.
“The images are part of a much larger body of work, which is a combination of a more documentary approach and portraits,” she explains. “These four portraits are some of my favourite images, especially the one of Riley and Wakiesha because they are so charismatic.

Photographs of a woman holding her baby, two shoppers, a drum majorette, and a child from a remote village in Sierra Leone have all been shortlisted for the National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize this year. The prize winners will be announced at an award ceremony at the NPG on 16 October, with the overall winner receiving £15,000 and other cash prizes awarded to the shortlisted photographers at the judges’ discretion.
Two of the images were shot in London, with Max Barstow behind a striking photograph of two women in a busy shopping street in the city centre. The image comes from his series Londoners and in it, he says, his aim has been to “make unposed portraits with the intensity of images made by great studio photographers such as Richard Avedon and Irving Penn”.