#taylor wessing

2020 Nov 24th

London. Dec, 19.

Portrait Prize

I wrote about 10 pages of notes during my gentle stroll through this exhibition, gentle to describe my movement as I drifted between the prints, my eyes shifting from each image and description in no great hurry, it was mid-afternoon on a weekday and I had taken this on if only as an exercise it what had been an uneventful couple of weeks. My feelings for the images themselves however, were far from gentle, as I sit now, at what I would call about the fourth attempt at rehashing those notes into some kind of review in relation to the exhibition as a whole, I do so now only as a mere exorcism of the idea of doing this at all, it’s not bringing me joy to look back on any of those images or projects and as I sit now in a strange americanised bar in the Beijing airport, my focus is elsewhere, catching glimpses inside the service entrances of the restaurants lining the hallways, the rust and and grim of those internal doors hidden under a shiny veneer the airport presents to the traveller like a shiny book cover with topical illustration for the country being visited or passed through, chefs, security, airport staff, bathroom porters, duty free shop staff, all reveal a look in the eye I’ve seen in others in countries I’ve spent time in, not spending anytime here outside of my few hours in stopover, my mind drifts and imagines the lives of those, clocking out at the end of their shift and taking trains perhaps hours away to their apartments, and what those apartments look like and feel like to be lived in. These thoughts wondrous, and I’m here betraying them thinking back to weeks ago in England.

I ask myself now why it was that I couldn’t garner as much interest in the lives of those displayed in the projects of the exhibition as I can in the few seconds I pass by anyone here and now before me as I wander throughout this airport (6 hours till boarding) and I think a part of that boredom lies in, and this felt like a blanket theme throughout the exhibition, that the images didn’t feel like the subjects depicted, the images felt like the photographers depicting their ideas of the subjects.

Take for example, the third place winner and their image of what at first glance looks like a William Eggelston-esque picture of a family on holiday evoking a spontaneous mood which turns out was part of an hour long sitting that was planned out months in advance. Or the photographer who won second prize, with another image in the exhibition that uses the cliche of ‘gesture illustrates my point’ with the old man who’s wife dies and is photographed looking solemnly outside the window toward the heavens, exposing for the indoor light giving that window light a angelic glow.

It seems strange to me that this technique by photographer would dominate the current interest, if one were to assume the judges of the portrait prize could indicate what is current, they seem to have decided that work is superior when the photographer has an idea he was trying to depict. This is interesting because a photograph can be made in 1/125th of a second and yet the situations shown were made with hours to work with and months before hand to plan. This is a reason 35mm has won out for me over a clearer product of medium format or even digital. People cannot be confined to the two dimensionality of an image and the harder you try to make things clear, the less room there is for interpretation. Let’s take you for instance.. You know yourself, you know who you are to you in relation to your experiences. And yet everyone else who has ever know you has a different version of you who is just is much you as the one you know.

Nothing can be depicted completely, not a person, not an idea.. The essence of art lies in that fact, if anything were to be communicated to the extent in which it was meant with no room for deviation, if we as humans were to be able to get across the way we feel about something concisely, there would be no reason for film, for music, for the hundreds of pages in a single book. Photography’s merit is in using it to ask questions of the self in a similar way to writing in a journal. No distinctions need to be made in the process and instead can be quickly snapped with an analysation in edit, a discovery through action.

Portrait of ‘Strong,’ from the series 'Tombo's Wound' 

I made a thing. Three tiered cake done for #TaylorWessing’s Brand Form event, incorporating #banksy and #johnpollack art 🖼🎨🌈🎂

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DM to get your cake masterpiece done — [email protected]

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#londoncakes #cakes #cakestagram #cakesofinstagram #igcakes #cake #cakemeistro #colour #color #rainbow #graffiti #art #cakedesign #cakedecoration #cakedecorating

“Fleeing Mosul” from the series Women in War: Life After ISIS 

by Abbie Trayler-Smith Photographer 

Abbie Trayler-Smith is a documentary and portrait photographer born and raised in South Wales. Travelling extensively her work covers women’s rights, social development and the aftermath of conflict. 

Her shortlisted photograph was shot outside Hasan Sham IDP camp in Northern Iraq. Trayler-Smith was there undertaking a commission for Oxfam documenting the camp where the charity was providing aid, talking to women who had lived under ISIS who were prepared to be photographed.  

A convoy of buses arrived from Mosul, bringing people to safety who had escaped the battle just hours before.  ‘I just remember seeing her face looking out at the camp,’ says Trayler-Smith,’ and the shock and the bewilderment in her’s and other’s faces and it made me shudder to imagine what living under ISIS had been like. To me the uncertainty in her face echoes the faces of people having to flee their homes around the world and references a global feeling of insecurity.’ 

WILLIAM SHEEPSKIN

TAYLOR WESSING PHOTO PORTRAIT PRIZE.

The National Portrait Gallery has named Martina Holmberg, a Stockholm-based photographer, as winner of the 2025 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize for her portrait Mel.

Holmberg’s portrait features the sitter, Mel, appearing lost in a daydream as cool light caresses her repaired skin.

2021 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize