Outstanding New Photographic Portraits from Around the World
The LensCulture Portrait Awards 2024 brought together an extremely strong group of applicants who are committed to using their cameras to present the timely and pressing issues of our current moment with extreme care, creativity, and technical skills. Through the power of the lens, this year's entrants reminded us of the vital and necessary role of photography.”
picks
Logan White’s terrific project Hearts Content Road offers a surreal journey through the trappings of adolescence. Curated spare sets, intentional lighting, and collaborative portraiture combine to conjure the layers of isolation, expectations, and potential that shape teenage life. Set in upstate New York, you wonder what’s next for those in White's pictures. Will they make it out of their town? Will they remain friends? You may ask the same questions of them that, at their age, you had asked yourself.
I love this spontaneous, unplanned group portrait. There was a wedding reception going on, and the photographer, Paul Spencer, had wanted to get a picture of the little boy and his older sister, but the other kids from the neighborhood jumped in, making faces and disrupting the solemnity of the occasion. The little boy in front looks angry at the intrusion (or maybe he didn’t like all the fuss about the wedding) and his sister looks stoic, enduring the goofiness. Whatever the real circumstances, we get a very real portrait of each of the seven kids. The photographer was perfectly prepared to capture the unexpected moment with his good camera and flash and excellent framing — and the black-and-white film makes it even more of a timeless gem.
This image depicts refugee Walid Saleh. The subject, an amputee, is depicted standing in a sportsground. The implication of his status is that has come through a lot, yet his body language is relaxed and open; he appears to have found peace in this context. The photographer’s use of light, color and composition is excellent—the long shadows going from left to right, including those thrown from both his original and new legs. The drapery in the background, the angles of the sports ground, all framing the man at the heart of the image. Its deceptively simple, but beautifully executed.
Minami Ivory's images haunt me. The numb expression in her self-portraits is deeply moving, even disturbing, but above all, this project is courageous. As a survivor of violence and abuse, Ivory gives a compelling account of how she continues to reclaim her body and self after the event—after an experience that changed her forever. We are there with her, watching her as she searches for ways out of the darkness and loneliness. Her portfolio gives hope for that she can reassert some control, even though there is no closure.
Within this series, Sarah earnestly and effectively captures the beauty, love, and strength of family. The care and tenderness evoked in the photographs reveals a strength and innocence, which is endearing. By presenting quotidian acts of care, Mensah presents a humanity in her images of Black women and girls that is not only wonderful to witness, but also necessary to document.
Official Portraits for a Post-Truth Era by Craig Ames tackles a hot topic in a cool way: military camouflage patterns developed in World War I to confuse and mislead the enemy are applied to some of the world’s most despicable political liars from Boris Johnson to Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin. For me, this series convincingly fulfills the four criteria of quality work: thematic relevance, conceptual coherence, formal execution and originality.
All the elements that attract me to an image and keep me lingering are here, inviting me to pick up on all the scattered clues. What surprised me is that this portrait feels distinctly old-fashioned, yet the calendar on the wall says June 2000. The slight anachronism of looking at a black and white, possibly medium format film, portrait, the quaint wood stove, the date along with the elegant composition and breathtaking strength of this picture sent me down the rabbit hole. Who is Herschel? Where was this portrait taken? How does the photographer choose and approach his subjects?
This portrait is part of a series on small town farming communities in Canada’s Ottawa river valley where the photographer grew up; a subject he has focused on for well over 30 years.
Tony Dočekal’s portrait of young Lyric is timeless and emotional. It dazzles with contrasts and paradoxes, in the sense that her juvenile beauty, elegant posture and penetrating gaze contrast with the frugality of her meal and the simplicity of the place where she lives: a school bus in an RV park in Tucson, Arizona. Throughout the jury process, this powerful portrait was one of the few images that haunted me beyond all the debates.
Thank you to the LensCulture Team for a flawless organization of the judging process. Serving as a judge for the Portrait Awards 2024 has proven to be a great opportunity to see some fantastic work. I was captivated by the ingenuity of the single images submitted as well as the larger projects, and surprised by the different perspectives from photographers around the world.”
Our International Jury
Rhea L. Combs, PhD is the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and works with her curatorial team along with the History, Conservation and Audience Engagement departments to grow the Portrait Gallery’s collection, develop impactful exhibitions, and draw connections between portraiture, biography and identity. Prior to this, Combs was at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture where she served as supervisory curator of photography and film and head of the museum’s Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts. She has curated numerous exhibitions related to film and photography both nationally and internationally, including: “Everyday Beauty: Photographs and Films from the Permanent Collection” (2016), “Represent: Hip-Hop Photography” (2018), and “Now Showing: African American Movie Posters” (2019). She is a co-curator of the forthcoming exhibition “Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971,” which will be presented at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. She received a BA from Howard University and an MA from Cornell University before earning a PhD from Emory University.
Andrew is the Deputy Photo Director at The New Yorker.
He commissions portfolios, portraiture, and documentary photography for the magazine and newyorker.com, as well as manages several photo editors. He joined the team in November 2021 after four years as TIME’s Deputy Director of Photography, where he co-managed a team of editors; assigned and collaborated with photographers around the world; pitched and produced covers, photo essays and features; and curated @time’s Instagram account.
He came to TIME in 2013 as a reporter and later served as a news editor. After joining the photo department in 2015, he commissioned and supported more than 120 photographers on (or above) every continent and produced portraits with more than a dozen presidents and prime ministers, the U.N. Secretary-General and the Dalai Lama. Among Andrew’s core focuses are climate change, conflict and displacement and public health.
The resulting work has been recognized by the American Society of Magazine Editors (National Magazine Awards), World Press Photo, Dart Awards for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, Overseas Press Club, Visa pour l’Image, Pictures of the Year International and more. In 2021, he was a POYi finalist for Visual Editor of the Year.
Anna Dannemann is Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2016-19) and has organized several solo exhibitions, among them Simon Fujiwara’s Joanne (2016), Charlotte Dumas’ Anima & The Widest Prairies (2015), Viviane Sassen's Analemma (2014), and William Burroughs. Anna regularly contributes to catalogues and other publications, and received an MA in Art and Visual History from the Humboldt-University of Berlin.
Andreas Müller-Pohle is a Berlin-based media artist and the founder and publisher of European Photography, an independent art magazine for international contemporary photography that celebrates its 45th anniversary this year. He has published the major works by media philosopher Vilém Flusser, available in the ten-volume Edition Flusser, including the seminal Philosophy of Photography, and has been a visiting professor and lecturer at institutions in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Andreas has worked with photography and media projects since the late 1970s. Recently, he has been pursuing two long-term projects: Studies on Water, with portraits of the water landscapes of the Danube and the megalopolis of Hong Kong, and Studies on Traffic, in which he investigates traffic phenomena in various regions of the world. His works have been widely published and exhibited and are included in numerous private and museum collections worldwide. In 2001, he was awarded the European Photography Prize from the Reind M. De Vries Foundation, a one-time distinction for his achievements in photography.
Stefano Stoll is Founder, Director and Chief Curator of Images Vevey, in Switzerland. This brand functions as an ecosystem dedicated to supporting artistic creation in its various forms. Images Vevey has 4 main activities: a biennial, an award, a permanent exhibition space and a publishing house.
Since 2008, Stefano Stoll has made monumental outdoor installations the speciality of the visual arts biennial. Every second year, Images Vevey proposes site-specific outdoor and indoor photographic installations in Vevey’s streets and parks, on the facades of its building, in its museums and galleries, and even in Lake Geneva. He has collaborated with artists such as Cindy Sherman, Dayanita Singh, Christian Marclay, Hans-Peter Feldman, Paul Fusco, René Burri, Lee Friedlander, Ryoji Ikeda, Alex Prager, JR, Erwin Wurm, Lebohang Kganye, Daido Moryiama, Christian Boltanski, Martin Parr, Bettina Rheims, Alec Soth, Thomas Struth, Bertien van Manen, Carmen Winant and Gillian Wearing among others. Besides managing one of Europe’s longest standing grants for photographic creation the (Grand Prix Images Vevey), he created and curates a permanent off-space dedicated to contemporary photography (L’Appartement – Espace Images Vevey). He is currently developing Images Vevey’s own publishing house (Éditions Images Vevey), committed to assist innovative editorial projects, in particular with the creation of the Images Vevey Book Award. Several Editions Images Vevey books have been shortlisted for the prestigious Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Awards, one of which won the “Best PhotoBook of the Year 2020” Award.
Executive Director of Fotografiska New York, Sophie Wright has over 20 years’ experience in arts leadership, creative strategy and programmes.
An expert in documentary photography, Wright was Global Cultural Director at Magnum Photos until 2020, where she ran an international team overseeing exhibitions and their accompanying books, commissions, print sales and talks programmes. Highlights include Magnum Contact Sheets (2011) and Magnum China (2018) with Thames & Hudson; Now is the Time a large-scale international commission and touring exhibition with the Boston Consulting Group, the Live Lab: a series of experimental residencies, which she conceived, held in London, Shenzhen, Moscow and Paris, and which Magnum continues to run. She also oversaw significant acquisitions of work by Magnum photographers such as Bruce Davidson, Marc Riboud, Werner Bischof and Ernest Cole to museums such as the Getty, MOMA, M+, Tate and others. Wright conceived and co-curated the exhibition America in Crisis, an updating of an historical Magnum project from 1969 with contemporary work from 2020, opened at the Saatchi Gallery in London in January 2022 and toured to the American Museum in Bath March 2023. She has contributed the text to Light on the Riviera: The History of Photography on the Cote d’Azur, edited by Genevieve Janvrin (TeNeues, May 2022). She is on the Advisory Board of the Journal of Photography and Culture in the UK and Photofairs, New York.
A chance encounter brought Lucy to work as an assistant photo editor for a newly minted Italian newsweekly called Liberal. After two formative years as junior assistant photo editor, Lucy went to New York to pursue a career as photo editor, critic and lecturer. She has worked for Business Week, The New York Times, l’Espresso, The New York Times magazine, Courrier International, The International Herald Tribune as well as photography agencies such as Sipa Press, Magnum Photos and briefly, the AFP. In 2011 Lucy joined M, the weekend magazine of Le Monde, as the Director of Photography where she remains today.
Jim Casper is the editor-in-chief of LensCulture, one of the leading online destinations to discover contemporary photography from around the world. As an active member in the contemporary photography world, Casper organizes annual international photography events, travels around the world to meet with photographers and review their portfolios, curates art exhibitions, writes about photography and culture, lectures, conducts workshops, serves as an international juror and nominator for key awards, and is an advisor to arts and education organizations.
