Roll with it! This year’s best portrait photography – in pictures
First prize winner Katie Hitchcock-Smith: Moroccan (Amazigh) Cowboys (from the series Tajine Westerns), 2025
This portrait of Nour and Mohmed was made during an artists’ residency near the town of Erfoud in eastern Morocco. To get to the location, she took an 11-hour bus ride across the Atlas Mountains. Katie Hitchcock-Smith arranged a collaborative, western-themed photoshoot, with the cowboy hat brought from her home and a jacket and tent bought at a local market. The Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize show is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 5 November until 17 January
Second prize winner Max Pattenden: Havannah, Lee Moor (from the series Men May Come and Men May Go, But I Go On Forever), 2025
This portrait of ten-year-old Havannah was taken in Lee Moor, a village on the edge of Dartmoor National Park. Pattenden was photographing a Halloween party when he spotted her. Recognising her timeless appearance, he invited her to be photographed around the village. In this image, taken at the end of the shoot on a cold day, Havannah’s expression is subtle, defying definition
Third prize winner James Clifford Kent: Neisser Yoel Gálvez Tabares, 16, poses at his home in Pinar del Río, Cuba, 2025
Neisser stands in full fencing regalia in his family’s living room. His face turns towards the only light source – open shutters letting in an even wash of daylight that illuminates his white jacket and breeches. Contrasting sharply with the elegant suit is the modest domestic interior. Neisser stands between a bulky television and a landline telephone trailing to a tangle of wires below. The blue-green tones of the background wall reveal hurricane repair
Winston Taylor Photographic Commission prize winner Marcie Docherty: PE (from the series In Pursuit of Muscle), 2026
Four men stand before an unassuming suburban building dressed as members of an American football team. Their jerseys, helmets and formation evoke the visual language of American high school sport, yet the illusion is quietly unsettling. Wrestling shorts replace football trousers, polished leather shoes sit awkwardly over athletic socks, and the ordinary streetscape refuses the attempted construct
Ellie Ramsden: A Young Elvis (from the series The Elvies), 2025
Known as the King in the 1950s and 1960s, Elvis Presley was one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Ellie Ramsden attended the Porthcawl Elvis Festival last year – the largest Elvis tribute event in the world. There she was endeared by this six-year-old boy sporting Presley’s rockabilly aesthetic (flared trousers, relaxed tailoring and slicked-back hair). Ellie is the winner of the Joan Wakelin bursary 2026, jointly administered by the Guardian and the Royal Photographic Society
Julia Appa: Head in the Clouds, 2025
In a work originally titled Spiegelwelten, German for ‘mirror worlds’, Julia Appa’s sitter looks into a mirror, her reflection locking eyes with the viewer. The photograph prompts the eye to move upward. The sitter’s closely cropped face is countered by the mirror which affords a clear, although inverted, reflection. Using a simple, centuries-old prop in portrait practice, the Hamburg-based photographer alternates the viewer between mirrored realities
Cheryl Newman: Untitled (from the series Six Weeks Away), 2025
London-based photographer Cheryl Newman turns the camera towards her daughter with the affectionate gaze of a proud mother. Diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, Newman’s daughter experiences chronic pain due to unstable joints. Here she lies over a round bale of hay with limbs outstretched, and Newman witnesses her daughter’s ‘power and endurance as we connect in making photographs’. Documenting this moment allows a reflection on their recent reunion after living apart for 10 years.
Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom: Lois and Her Mother Carey in the Garden, 2025
Photographers Rona Bar and Ofek Avshalom met Lois and her mother Carey through London’s Jewish artistic community, and developed an ongoing collaboration that evolved into friendship. In this portrait, Lois sits nude in a garden while Carey tends to the surrounding plants, each absorbed in her own activity yet united in a shared domestic space. The photographers say the work reflects the ‘complex dance between mothers and daughters – how identity is inherited, resisted and reinvented’
Craig Fleming: Jordan, Window Fitter (from the series Quiet Men), 2025
This portrait forms part of Craig Fleming’s ongoing series depicting working men whose individuality is expressed through their presence and personal style. Jordan, a window fitter and acquaintance of the photographer, is presented in a pared-back composition that recalls the formal language of the photographic studio. But rather than elevating its subject through idealisation, the photograph affirms the dignity of everyday work, recognising portraiture as a means of recording character as much as occupation
Jan Zoilo Rafael Mayo: Drag Queen in Waiting (from the series Pride), 2025
Letlet Bullshit, a prominent drag queen in Manila, prepares for an evening performance. Filipino photographer Jan Zoilo Rafael Mayo turns his attention to the quiet moment before transformation is complete. Surrounded by wigs, make-up and costumes, Letlet occupies a space between preparation and performance, where the boundaries between public persona and private self remain fluid
Siorna Ashby: Body Like Mine, 2026
Body Like Mine reflects Siorna Ashby’s exploration of portraiture beyond facial likeness, considering how identity can be expressed through gesture, form and physical presence. Working collaboratively with the sitter, Ashby directs attention towards the body, using a low viewpoint and careful composition to challenge conventional expectations of portraiture. The image expands the language of photographic portraiture, suggesting that identity is experienced and communicated through the whole body
Manuel Vazquez: Warren, 2025
Australian musician and composer Warren Ellis is best known as a member of the Bad Seeds and co-founder of the instrumental rock band Dirty Three. But he was approached by Colombia-born and raised photographer Manuel Vazquez in recognition of his literary, rather than musical, achievement – Nina Simone’s Gum: A Memoir of Things Lost and Found. After they agreed to meet in a north London pub, Vazquez portrays Ellis not in the guise of a rockstar, but as he is
Niamh Barry: Transgender Storm Chaser, Raychel Sanner (from the series Something in the Air), 2025
With buck skulls and tools lining the wall behind her, seated in this domestic interior is transgender woman Raychel Sanner, who has pursued many severe storms across Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley. But Irish photographer Niamh Barry portrays her comfortably at rest rather than facing the elements. Once a place of rejection, her in-laws’ home is now a welcoming space of comfort and security. Sanner and Barry met through their shared passion for environmental and LGBTQ+ advocacy
Tom Parker: Venice Boxers (from the series Venice Beach), 2026
Seagulls swarm somewhat menacingly above, as if enthused by the action below. Siderio Mitchell is a boxer on the verge of fighting professionally. Arm recoiled and poised to make a swing, he is captured by British photographer Tom Parker, who crossed paths with Mitchell while taking a morning walk by Venice Beach in Los Angeles. In Mitchell, he admired a ‘steely determinism and poise [he] had not seen before’. The poised athleticism draws on a long art-historical tradition of the heroic male figure
Kate Hampson: Grace, 2025
Just off-centre sits a young bride in an ivory wedding dress. In the foreground, Grace appears perched while her friend adjusts the hem of her dress; the full-length mirror reveals that she is in a manual wheelchair. Before the wedding ceremony, this intimate shot captures Grace lifting herself with her arms, looking down at her dress. While the audience is not afforded a clear view of the bride’s face, the joy that radiates from this portrait is unmistakable
Lexy List: Beauty Routine, 2026
This dynamic composition features a young, reclined girl as its focal point. Natural light gently brightens her brown eyes and left arm, the unusual pose lending a dramatic quality to the photograph, as if she were a dancer mid-performance. The viewer’s eye is drawn to the sitter’s soft gaze, travelling then to the makeup and nails made of Blu Tack. She was photographed by her older sister, Lexy List, who notes how this moment ‘reflects the younger generation’s obsession with beauty products’
David Cossini: Max (from the series Rough Edges), 2025
Thirteen-year-old Max sports a mullet stylishly swept over his right shoulder, with his eyebrows raised daringly. Australian documentary and portrait photographer David Cossini has known Max since he first began photographing Mulletfest, an Australian touring event that supports the Mark Hughes Foundation. Raising funds for research and creating awareness, the foundation supports brain cancer patients and their families, a cause Max tirelessly devotes his weekends to
Ciril Jazbec: Anton and Puffling (from the series Puffling Rescue, Vestmannaeyjar) 2025
A young puffling perches patiently on Anton’s shoulder moments before its release into the sea. Vestmannaeyjar in Iceland is home to the largest Atlantic Puffin colony in the world. When newly hatched pufflings depart their cliffside burrows for the first time, relying on moonlight to guide them out to sea, artificial city lighting disorients and dangerously draws them to urban life. Local residents such as Anton rescue stranded pufflings, safely house them overnight and release them in the morning
Saana Hellsten: John, 2025
Finnish creative director Saana Hellsten creates this simple yet striking portrait, composing it around four intense colour contrasts: the vivid green table, the red jumper and lollipop, the grey wall, and the rich brown skin tones. When visiting John’s school in Naivasha, Kenya, the photographer found ‘something compelling in the contrast between his age and his composure’
Tom Oldham: Robert Rhodes, actor and activist, 2025
Actor Robert Rhodes is photographed with a directness that reflects the openness with which he has spoken about identity and representation. Known for his roles in 28 Years Later and House of the Dragon, Rhodes has described his facial difference and queer identity as inseparable from who he is. The close framing and gesture convey a sense of intimacy, suggesting a conversation rather than a formal sitting
Terry Graham: Lyston & Lynford ( from the series Table to Table), 2025
Terry Graham’s photograph depicts identical twins sharing breakfast in a neighbourhood cafe. The two men were cast as part of the artist’s wider spoken-word film project. The familiarity of the setting, with its mugs, breakfast plates and tiled interior, reinforces an immediate assumption of kinship. Yet, as the eye moves across the photograph, subtle differences emerge. Graham uses resemblance to examine the ways identity is constructed through visual cues, creating a portrait that rewards sustained lookingPhotograph: National Portrait Gallery London/Terry GrahamKioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.