Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023
For several years I worked in a building opposite the National Portrait Gallery. Indeed, for a goodly chunk of that time my desk actually overlooked the entrance. I’m appalled and not a little disgusted with myself that I crossed the road and went inside so few times during that period. But each time I did, I was reminded why it’s probably my favourite art gallery in London. A view that my visit there last week only served to confirm.
Admittedly, I’ve been equally tardy in getting to the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023 exhibition (although, by way of a very meagre excuse, the exhibition wasn’t on throughout 2023, only since November), but as it’s still on display until the end of this month (Feb 2024), I wanted to encourage any of you who can, not to miss the chance to follow in my fascinated footsteps.
The entrance to the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023 exhibition
Launched in 2003, the open competition which attracts about 6,000 entries from which around 60 are chosen to be displayed, and which always bears the name of the sponsor, so started as the Schweppes Photographic Portrait Prize, celebrates the best in contemporary photographic portraiture.
Entrants have to be over 18, can come from anywhere in the world and be professional or amateur. They are encouraged to submit portraits that focus on portraying people with an ‘emphasis on their identity as individuals’. The winner of the competition gets £15,000, with a second prize of £3,000 and a third of £2,000.
The chosen selection of widely varying portraits, and the information that accompanies each of them, make for an absorbing, challenging, revealing, captivating, often moving, sometimes funny, display in which each of the photographers captures something powerful and connective in each of their subjects.
Here are just a few examples (with apologies for the reflections in the glass. It’s fiendishly difficult to get a shot without that!)
Benedicta & Jasmine
British photographer Garrod Kirkwood took this shot as part of his ongoing exploration of sibling relationships. The two sisters were born in different continents owing to their parents’ migration to the UK from Africa. Captured in natural light with no styling, there’s a deep connection between the two as they look the viewer directly in the eye.
l-r Scrolling, TikTok and Hidden Quarry by Philippa James
These three images are part of an on-going project by Philippa featuring her 14 year old daughter and her friends, all born at the dawn of the smartphone era, in which she explores the youngsters relationship with their mobile phones and each other. It made me think, as I so often do, about the world of connectivity and communication that my little grandgirls are growing up in to.
Phopy by Zoja Kalinovskis
This is from a series that Zoja calls Unseen. As a disabled, queer, non-binary artist, the British photographer aims to “challenge the narrative around how disabled people are viewed”. This portrait of their friend is inspired by classical sculpture.
Ibu (Mother) by Byron Mohammad Hamzah
Byron is a practicing doctor who grew up in a conservative East-Asian Muslim family in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia before moving to the UK to study medicine, a decision his mother, Farah, found difficult to come to terms with. “As time passed, I could see that out values and views of life had changed and so had the dynamics of our relationship” he explains about this portrait which so perfectly encapsulates the complexities of his relationship with his mother, who he describes as “the stoic matriarch” of the family.
Diena by Alexandre Silberman
In case you were wondering, this is the shot that the judges chose as the first prize winner, feeling that it ‘encompassed a compelling blend of the traditional and the contemporary’ and evoked ‘art historical depictions of a Madonna ‘ whilst the ‘monochrome palette lends a timeless quality to the work with contemporary details bringing the portrait firmly into the present.’
If you want to know what the runners were, well, you’ll just have to visit the exhibition to find out! And you can find out the opening hours and ticket prices to do that HERE
Whilst you’re in the gallery, don’t miss out on the chance to explore the rest of their fabulously wide-ranging collection, which includes a group of recent portraits in an area just beyond the reception desk including this arresting one of King Charles
and quite a few other famous faces you might recognise
I was delighted to find the gallery buzzingly busy on a Thursday afternoon, with everyone from mothers pushing their young children in buggies, to teenagers, to, of course lots of tourists, to disabled people in wheelchairs, all absorbed in the people from every century and background presented in the portraits and the stories behind them all.
The Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2023 is on until Feb 25 Details about visiting the National Portrait Gallery and all the current exhibitions can be found HERE
