Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2021

This book provides a unique opportunity to see an inspiring range of portraits from contemporary photographers selected from thousands of submissions. The works included are not only about the sitters, but also reveal the outstanding skill of the photographers in capturing a moment in time and conveying something of the spirit of those photographed. This year's In Focus display will be the sixth in the competition's history, exhibiting works by Alessandra Sanguinetti, a photographer known for evocative works that focus on the fantasies and fears that accompany the physical and psychological transition from childhood to adulthood. Her works will be shown in the exhibition and a number of these are reproduced in the catalogue, accompanying an interview about the photographer's life and work. Fully illustrated in colour throughout, the book also features all the selected entries with extended captions, comments and insights from the judges and interviews with the prizewinners.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize celebrates the vitality and excellence in portrait photography today. This book features all the entries from this years' competition.

In 2016, award-winning Minnesota-based photographer R. J. Kern made portraits of youth contestants at Minnesota county fairs. Each participant—some as young as four years old—had spent a year raising an animal, which they had then entered into a 4-H livestock competition. None of the youths who sat for him had succeeded in winning an award, despite the obvious care they had given to their animals. The Unchosen Ones depicts the bloom of youth and the mettle of the kids who grow up on farms, reminding us how resilient children can be when confronted with life's inevitable disappointments. The formal qualities of the lighting and setting endow these young people with a gravitas beyond their years, revealing self-directed dedication in some, and in others, perhaps, the pressures of traditions imposed upon them. Kern's beautiful portraits capture a particular America, a rural world, and a time in life when the layered emotions of youth are laid bare. Four years later, in 2020, Kern returned to photograph his young subjects. The most recent photographs show how the children have grown into adolescence or young adulthood: some of them have continued to pursue animal husbandry, while others have developed other interests. It is likely that some of these kids will not choose to continue running their family farms—an unpredictable and demanding way to make a living. These diptychs are punctuated by lush landscapes of the farms that are their homes. As Kern made the second group of photographs, he asked his young subjects what they had carried forward from their previous experience. What were their thoughts, their dreams, and their goals for the future? How would they fit into the future of agricultural America?

Acclaimed portrait and documentary photographer Peter Zelewski has spent the past three years capturing the people and faces of the streets of London. His images, which have be seen in the National Portrait gallery and throughout the press, are both intimate and considered and as such are closer to art photography than snapshots. The images are accompanied by arresting quotes that reveal the inner lives of the strangers that make this the world's most colourful city.

Portraits of American and Middle Eastern young women entering adulthood from Rania Matar, author of L'Enfant-Femme As a Lebanese-born American artist and mother, Rania Matar's (born 1964) cross-cultural experiences inform her art. She has dedicated her work to exploring issues of personal and collective identity through photographs of female adolescence and womanhood--both in the United States where she lives, and in the Middle East where she is from. Rania Matar: She focuses on young women in their late teens and early twenties, who are leaving the cocoon of home, entering adulthood and facing a new reality. Depicting women in the United States and the Middle East, this project highlights how female subjectivity develops in parallel forms across cultural lines. Each young woman becomes an active participant in the image-making process, presiding over the environment and making it her own. Matar portrays the raw beauty of her subjects--their age, individuality, physicality and mystery--and photographs them the way she, a woman and a mother, sees them: beautiful, alive.

The Men Who Would Be King tells the stories of men from the West who go to Vanuatu claiming/believing they are the fulfilment of a prophecy on the islands that says a divine man will come from overseas. These tales are as wily as any fiction; a claimant to a tropical throne living in exile in Nice, an American filmmaker wandering between villages handing out necklaces of his own face. This book asks why the old explorers dream about deified white men has endured in the Western imagination, through films and literature, and examines the long shadow it casts into our own time.

This book provides a unique opportunity to see an inspiring range of portraits from contemporary photographers selected from thousands of submissions. The works included are not only about the sitters, but also reveal the outstanding skill of the photographers in capturing a moment in time and conveying something of the spirit of those photographed. This year's In Focus display will bethe fifthin the competition's history, exhibiting new works by an internationally renowned photographer alongside the competition works selected for exhibition. A number of these new photographs are also reproduced in the catalogue, accompanying an interview about the photographer'slife and work. Fully illustrated in colour throughout, the book also features all the selected entries with extended captions, comments and insights from the judges and interviews with the prize winners.

Drawing on the outstanding collection of the National Portrait Gallery, this volume celebrates the variety and complexity of portraiture The National Portrait Gallery holds the world's most extensive collection of portraits: a museum of people, a gallery of stories and ideas, and a home of artistic masterpieces. Icons and Identitiesdraws together icons from Shakespeare to Audrey Hepburn alongside less well-known sitters that provide insight into the representation of identity in portraits. It also includes some intriguing surprises to reflect the diversity of the National Portrait Gallery's collection and to introduce audiences around the world to exceptional portraits of many kinds. Icons and Identitiesshows how artists, working across mediums, have revealed the visually stimulating and intellectually vibrant tradition of portrait making. The book is structured around a series of key themes and each section includes a selection of works from a range of periods. Artists include: Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Andy Warhol, Marlene Dumas and Shirin Neshat.