Category Archives: Photography

Steph Wilson wins Taylor Wessing photography prize with striking portrait

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National Portrait Gallery announces £15,000-winning portrait that conveys atypical image of motherhood

A portrait documenting an unconventional and “imperfect” example of motherhood has won one of the world’s most prestigious photography prizes.

The National Portrait Gallery has named the British photographer Steph Wilson as winner of the 2024 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize for her portrait Sonam. The photographer, who works between London and Paris, wins £15,000.

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Love story: Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour at Wembley – photo essay

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Scottish photographer Dougie Wallace documented the Swifties from the UK and beyond decked in their finery to see their hero perform

As Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour sweeps across the globe, it’s on track to gross more than $1bn (£770m) by the end of 2024, having already become the first tour to pass that figure last year.

Economists have even started talking about the “Swift effect” or Swiftonomics. Rumour has it that the tour’s impact may have played a role in the Bank of England’s deliberations before cutting its interest rate at the start of this month. With almost 1.2 million fans attending concerts in the UK, each spending an estimated average of £848 on the overall experience of attending the concerts, the surge in spending sparked a short-term bump in inflation.

‘Infectious energy that could only come from dedicated Swifties who had travelled from all corners of the UK and beyond. Being from Scotland and not into football meant I was visiting Wembley for the first time.’

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Photographer Magnus Hastings celebrates the artistry and pride of drag

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Queen, his biggest show to date, opens in Liverpool and features new commissions of the city’s drag performers

As a child, Magnus Hastings loved stealing his sister’s clothes and wearing his mother’s heels and feather boas, before he got “shamed out of being a drag child”.

Now, decades later, the award-winning photographer is celebrating the artistry of drag and the collective spirit of pride in his biggest exhibition to date at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery.

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‘Realities of apartheid’: South African artist wins Deutsche Börse photography prize

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Lebohang Kganye blends oral traditions, family photos and theatre in a ‘new and fresh way’ to trace personal history of apartheid era

The South African artist Lebohang Kganye has won the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize for her work that uses large-scale cutouts and elements of set design to trace and depict her family history during the apartheid era.

The Johannesburg-based artist took home the £30,000 prize for her winning exhibition, which is on display at the Photographers’ Gallery in central London and is called Haufi nyana? I’ve come to take you home.

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‘Iconic’ Man Ray image sells for €120,000 at auction of 200 works

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Le Violon d’Ingres print produced under artist’s supervision was among friend’s collection auctioned in Paris

It is one of the most recognisable images of the surrealist movement: a black and white photograph by Man Ray of Kiki de Montparnasse with f-shaped sound holes painted on her back representing a violin.

Le Violon d’Ingres, which was produced in 1924 and signed by the US artist, set a record for the most expensive photograph when it sold for $12.4m (£9.8m) at auction in New York in 2022.

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Photography bursary launched in memory of Guardian’s Eamonn McCabe

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Royal Photographic Society says award reflects the support and encouragement McCabe showed for aspiring photographers

A bursary focusing on the theme of sporting endeavour and designed to help talented young photographers has been launched in honour of the memory of the award-winning Guardian and Observer photographer Eamonn McCabe.

The bursary, established by The Royal Photographic Society (RPS), The Guardian and Observer and McCabe’s family will give £3,000 to a photographer aged 25 or under to produce a project.

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Young lover in Robert Doisneau’s Paris kiss photograph dies aged 93

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Françoise Bornet’s embrace with then boyfriend in 1950 became one of the most famous images of the city

It was one of the most famous kisses of the 20th century – a postwar clinch that became a 1980s poster phenomenon, bringing fame and court battles.

Françoise Bornet, the young lover immortalised in the French photographer Robert Doisneau’s The Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville, has died aged 93.

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Nan Goldin named art world’s most influential figure

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Photographer and campaigner against Sackler family tops ArtReview Power 100 list

Nan Goldin, the pioneering photographer and campaigner against the billionaires who fuelled the US opioid epidemic, has topped an annual ranking of the contemporary art world’s most influential people and organisations.

Goldin, 70, took the number one spot on the ArtReview Power 100 list. This year, for the first time, the top 10 is made up entirely of artists who use their work and platforms to intervene in the pressing social and political issues of the current moment.

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Hungary sacks museum chief for not enforcing under-18s ban at LGBTQ+ exhibition

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László Simon dismissed after National Museum allowed children to visit a World Press Photo show

The director of Budapest’s National Museum has been fired from his role over a contentious anti-LGBTQ+ law that he himself voted for when he was a member of parliament.

Hungary’s government on Monday dismissed director László Simon after his museum allowed under-18s to visit a World Press Photo exhibition featuring images of LGBTQ+ people, despite laws banning the “promotion of homosexuality” to minors.

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The fight over US abortion rights in the year without Roe – photo essay

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A look back on the year since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade with the Dobbs decision, and the advocates who aren’t giving up

While the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade sent shockwaves around the country, many activists, physicians and advocacy groups closely engaged in the fight over abortion in the US were not surprised.

Since Roe’s establishment of the federal right to abortion in 1973, anti-abortion advocates and conservative lawmakers have been chipping away at it. Restrictions on abortion increased over the last decade, and by the mid-2010s, seven states had just one abortion clinic left. In Mississippi, where the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that ultimately ended Roe originated, the state’s one clinic did not provide abortions beyond 16 weeks of pregnancy, meaning many people already had to travel to find care.

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‘Man of 1,000 faces’ wins Deutsche Börse photography prize

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Samuel Fosso scoops £30,000 award for performative self-portraits of historical figures including Angela Davis and Mao Zedong

One of Africa’s most important living photographers and contemporary artists, who photographs himself in the style of leading historical figures including Martin Luther King and Angela Davis, has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize 2023.

The Cameroonian-born Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso was awarded the £30,000 prize – one of the most prestigious in the industry – at the Photographers’ Gallery in London on Thursday.

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Newcastle’s Side Gallery to close after funding cuts and energy bills rise

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Photography space that inspired Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall launches fundraising campaign with aim of reopening in 2024

A small and much-loved photography gallery that has punched well above its size for more than 45 years will close this weekend because of funding cuts and cost-of-living pressures.

The Side Gallery, near the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, was opened in 1977 by a collective championing positive images of working-class life.

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Flavour of the month: the Spanish hamlet (population: 16) that created a hit nude calendar

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Even oldest resident, aged 100, strips off in venture aimed at revitalising village in Murcia

For decades they’ve grappled with a steady exodus as residents set their sights on jobs and opportunities beyond the southern Spanish hamlet. But the dwindling population of Peña Zafra de Abajo may have found a singular strategy to fight back – in essence stripping down to save their town.

“When I suggested the idea of a nude calendar, people said, ‘Are you crazy?’” said Lucía Nicolás, who leads the hamlet’s residents’ association. “But I saw it as a way to put ourselves on the map and show off our hamlet of 16 residents.”

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Africa’s biggest photography library opens in Ghana

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Ghanaian photographer’s crowdfunded project won support of Humans of New York author and boasts more than 30,000 books

The largest photography library in Africa has opened in Ghana’s capital, Accra, showcasing the work of the continent and diaspora’s forgotten, established and emerging talent.

Founded by Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson, the Dikan Center houses more than 30,000 books he has collected. The first of its kind in Ghana, a photo studio and classrooms provide space for workshops while a fellowship programme is aimed at African documentarians and visual artists. An exhibition space will host regular shows, the first of which is Ahennie, a series by the late Ghanaian documentary photographer Emmanuel Bobbie (also known as Bob Pixel), who died in 2021.

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Forgotten photos show how Kenyan archaeologists unearthed secrets of their own country

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Exhibitions in UK and Africa rewrite history by celebrating discoveries of overlooked black excavators in colonial era

The photographs are rare, the subject choice unusual, but what the photographer captured was a common sight in the early 20th century: a team of colonised people, hard at work under a hot sun, excavating an ancient monument.

Today, without these photos, taken in Kenya in the 1940s and 50s, there would be scarcely any evidence that African Kenyans were present at archaeological digs. Their contributions and priceless finds were credited to their European bosses – and their important role in unearthing the history of their own continent has been all but forgotten.

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Bondi becomes nude beach as thousands take part in Spencer Tunick’s Sydney installation

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Legislation had to be changed to permit public nudity on the beach

For the first time in its history, Bondi has been declared a nude beach.

On Saturday, thousands of bodies huddled together in the early morning light to model in artist Spencer Tunick’s latest Australian installation – and his first in the name of skin cancer.

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Photos of lockdown mundanity win £15,000 Taylor Wessing prize

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Judges commend Clémentine Schneidermann for simple series capturing neighbour in Wales

A series of portraits documenting the mundane, daily chores of life in lockdown have won one of the world’s most prestigious photography prizes.

The National Portrait Gallery has named French photographer Clémentine Schneidermann as winner of the 2022 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize for her series Laundry Day. The photographer, who lives and works between Paris and south Wales, wins £15,000.

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Guardian and Observer photographer Eamonn McCabe dies aged 74

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Tributes paid to one of the most celebrated newspaper photographers and picture editors of his generation

Eamonn McCabe, one of the most celebrated and admired newspaper photographers and picture editors of his generation, has died aged 74.

McCabe was a multi-award-winning sports photographer at the Observer from 1976 and later became a trailblazing picture editor of the Guardian at a key moment in its history. His third act was as a portrait photographer, with 29 examples of his work in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

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Famed Churchill portrait stolen from hotel and replaced with fake

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An employee at the Château Laurier in Ottawa spotted something amiss with ‘Roaring Lion’ portrait by photographer Yousuf Karsh

Police in Canada are investigating the “brazen” heist of a famed Sir Winston Churchill portrait after the original photograph was mysteriously swapped for a fake.

Last week, an employee at the Château Laurier hotel in Ottawa, noticed something amiss with a portrait known as the “Roaring Lion” which was taken after the wartime leader addressed the Canadian parliament in 1941.

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US airman who rescued film of A-bomb horrors is honoured at last

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Cameraman Daniel McGovern copied footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki devastation to ensure lessons were learned

The photograph shows devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb: a scorched wilderness where there was once a city. At its centre stands a lone man with a camera.

It was 9 September 1945 and Lt Daniel McGovern, a US Army Air Force cameraman, was documenting ground zero, the point directly below the bomb’s detonation four weeks earlier. Few would recognise McGovern, but the vision of apocalypse is familiar from documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.

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