Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2021

Interesting exhibition at Cromwell Place for the National Portrait Gallery of this year’s shortlisted pictures in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

The show was at Cromwell Place as the National Portrait Gallery is being refurbished and it made by a good alternative venue even if the space was more limited. I did however find the reflection off the pictures a problem as it made them hard to view without seeing yourself in the image. It might have been good to use more non-reflective glass.

I went to a member’s preview event at which a speaker, sorry whose name I didn’t catch, talked us through the awards and photographs. She taught me different things to look for in photos plus learned that the works are judged without knowing the artist or the stories.

There was inevitably concentration on Covid and quite local pictures to the photographers. There were a number where people had moved in together for lockdown with particularly tender pictures of older parents.

Donovan Smallwood’s pictures of people in Central Park in lockdown were lovely distinct portraits with an added level of poignancy when you learned they were taken on the site Seneca, a black village demolished to make the park.

I liked Todd Anthony’s picture of Mohammed Lappia, an amputee footballer in a wonderful triangular composition and Katya Llina’s “David” which takes traditional female pose and puts a large man in it.

My favourite photograph was the one shown here of the Beck Brothers by Joseph P Smith from his “End of an Era” series. They took over a printing company in 1945 when they were 14 & 17.

Closes 2 January 2021

Review

Evening Standard


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