NPG call for entries in Taylor Wessing Photographic Portait Prize 2011

The National Portrait Gallery, located in the heart London, has announced it is calling for entries in the influential Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011. The competition is open to all photographers aged 18 and over and the First Prize winner will receive not only £12,000 but also widespread recognition. The resulting exhibition of work will run at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 10 November 2011 until 12 February 2012. One of the exhibiting photographers will also be selected to shoot a feature story for ELLE magazine, at standard commissioning rates and expenses. Please see below for more details, including the entry submission criteria.

UPDATE 16 May 2011, the entry fee for the competition is £23 ($37) per photograph. All entry forms must be received in advance, either online or by post, by 7 July 2011

Press release:

 
10 May 2011
 
CALL FOR ENTRIES - TAYLOR WESSING PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAIT PRIZE 2011
 
The National Portrait Gallery is delighted to announce the Call for Entries for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011, a major international photographic award. Entry forms are now available and the closing date for entries is 7 July 2011. To enter, visit www.npg.org.uk/photoprize and complete the online application form.
 
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 is open to all photographers over the age of 18 and provides an important platform for portrait photographers including gifted amateurs, students and professionals of all ages. Around 60 photographers will be selected for the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, and the winner of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011 will receive £12,000. The exhibition will run at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 10 November 2011 until 12 February 2012.
 
For the third year running ELLE magazine will commission a photographer selected for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition to shoot a feature story for the magazine. Clare Shilland won the second ELLE Commission in 2010 for her portrait Merel.
 
Last year the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize attracted nearly 6,000 entries and was won by David Chancellor, for his portrait Huntress with Buck. Prizes were also awarded to Panayiotis Lamprou, Jeffrey Stockbridge and Abbie Trayler-Smith.
 
Tim Eyles, Managing Partner of Taylor Wessing says:
‘We are delighted to continue our sponsorship of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and we look forward to further strengthening our relationship with the National Portrait Gallery. As a multi-jurisdictional law firm we are proud to support an international competition that reflects our own firm-wide commitment to developing talent and supporting the arts, and which provides such pleasure and inspiration to those who take part and visit the exhibition. We hope that amateur and professional photographers internationally will be inspired to submit their entries to make this year’s competition the best yet.’
 
Publication
A 72 page catalogue (RRP £15) featuring all the selected photographs will accompany the exhibition.
 
Notes to Editors
    ▪    Call for entries information may be downloaded at www.npg.org.uk/photoprize or by sending a stamped addressed A4 envelope to:
 
Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2011
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place
London
WC2H OHE
 
    •    The First Prize winner receives £12,000. In addition the judges, at their discretion, will award one or more cash prizes to the shortlisted photographers.
 
    •    ELLE magazine will choose one photographer selected for the exhibition to shoot a feature story. They will pay standard commissioning rates and expenses to the photographer chosen. ELLE is the world’s biggest-selling fashion magazine with 39 editions worldwide. The British edition of ELLE sells 195,455 copies a month (ABC January-December 2009). The Gallery is very grateful to ELLE magazine for their collaboration. www.elleuk.com

Previously unseen portraits by John Swannell go on display at NPG

The National Portrait Gallery in London has announced a new display which will show previously unseen portraits by John Swannell. The display, Now and Then: Photographs by John Swannell, will run from 22 April until 31 December 2011 in Room 38a of the Gallery.

Press release:

PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN PORTRAITS OF SUSAN BOYLE AND TONY BLAIR TO GO DISPLAY AT NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
 
Previously unreleased portraits of singer Susan Boyle, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and art historian and museum director Sir Roy Strong (in Elizabethan costume), will form part of a new display at the National Portrait Gallery. The display will highlight 16 portraits recently acquired for the Gallery’s Collection by acclaimed photographer John Swannell. The portraits on display range from previously unseen photographs taken in the last year, to portraits taken at the start of his career in the early 1970s. The display, Now and Then: Photographs by John Swannell, will run from 22 April until 31 December 2011 in Room 38a of the Gallery.
 
The photographs of Boyle and Blair are both unpublished images from Swannell’s photo shoots for their respective recent best-selling autobiographies. The portrait of Sir Roy Strong, art historian and former Director of the National Portrait Gallery, was a personal commission in which Strong is depicted in doublet and hose.
 
Known for his photographs of the Royal family, the display includes Swannell’s portrait of HRH The Princess Royal, commissioned for her 60th birthday. Spanning Swannell’s career since the 1970s, the display also includes portraits of musician Phil Lynott, co-founder and musician with Thin Lizzy, fashion icon Iman, singer George Michael, broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, actor Bill Nighy and film director Christopher Nolan. Swannell is particularly celebrated for his fashion photography, reflected in his portraits of Victoria Beckham, fashion designer Betty Jackson and actress Sienna Miller, modelling one of her sister’s designs for their jointly owned fashion label twenty8twelve.
 
Born in 1946, John Swannell left school at sixteen and first worked at Vogue Studios, assisting photographers such as Cecil Beaton. He worked for David Bailey from 1969 to 1973, including on Bailey’s book, Goodbye Baby and Amen (1969), before establishing his own studio. He spent the next 10 years travelling and working for magazines including Vogue, Harpers & Queen, The Sunday Times and Tatler. In 1993 Swannell was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. His work was first exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in the group exhibition, Twenty for Today: New Portrait Photography (1985), and a solo exhibition of his work, Twenty Years On, was staged at the Gallery in 1997. The Gallery first began to acquire Swannell’s work in 1983, and now holds over 100 of his portraits covering the years 1970 to 2010. He has published numerous books, including Fine Lines (1982), Twenty Years On (1996), I’m still standing (2002) and Nudes 1978-2006 (2006). Swannell’s work is also held in collections at the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, and the Royal Photographic Society.

EVENTS
John Swannell will be giving a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society on 7 June at 7pm in aid of the National Autistic Society. This is a rare opportunity to see a personal collection of his work and hear of his travels and extraordinary career. Tickets £15
For further information please visit here.

For futher information about the NPG, please click here.

Susan Boyle, 2010 by John Swannell © John Swannell

Sir Roy Strong, 2010by John Swannell © John Swannell

Tony Blair, 2009 by John Swannell © John Swannell

Portraits of the Unseen - Chasing Mirrors

The National Portrait Gallery is working with three community partners in West London to deliver a three-year project from 2009 - 2011, working with young people and families from Tallo Information Centre in Ealing, Afghan Association Paiwand in Barnet, and An Nisa, a Muslim women's organization, in Brent.

© National Portrait Gallery, London and the Chasing Mirrors Collective

Each year a different lead artist will collaborate with participants via a series of creative workshops to explore the Gallery's Collection, exploring issues around identity and cultural representation, to produce an exhibition of new work at the Gallery.

The first of these exhibitions, Chasing Mirrors, ran from October 2009 - January 2010. The second, Chasing Mirrors: Portraits of the Unseen, is taking place from 15 October 2010 - 9 January 2011. The third will take place at the Gallery in Autumn 2011.

The content of the creative workshops will draw on the expertise and artistic practice of the lead artist and will be shaped through the input of the participants. The medium used will vary and could include painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, mixed media or poetry in response to the Collection and the genre of portraiture. This project is funded by John Lyon's Charity

Photography: Alinah Azadeh/Chasing Mirrors, 'Portraits Of The Unseen/detail'. Courtesy: NPG/Chasing Mirrors.

In this second year of the project, the work in this installation will result from collaboration between artist Alinah Azadeh and the same groups who took part last year. The installation will move away from representation through human image: the outer, familiar manifestation of identity. Instead, participants will explore how portraits of the inner, ‘hidden' self can be created. Personal objects will be wrapped with cloth, concealing them and making them a part of the collective piece. Text will be integral as it is in traditional Islamic culture, in this case using the many languages spoken within the community groups.

Alinah Azadeh

Photograph: Alinah Azadeh

Alinah Azadeh is a British-Iranian artist with a background in painting, new media and video. Since her MA in Media Arts Practice at Westminster University (2001), she has created installations that combine textile media with texts and networked technology. Collaboration and mass participation are central to her work, either with other practitioners or the audience itself.
Recent projects include The Shape of Things : The Gifts, a textile installation for Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (Feb 6 - April18, 2010): 999 small objects were donated by members of the public which had personal meaning for the Giver. These were wrapped and bound using fabric and yarn, and suspended from the ceiling of the gallery to form a large composite piece.

Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 Shortlist

Four photographers have been shortlisted for the £12,000 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, the major international photography award. Firmly established as the leading showcase for new talent in portrait photography, the prize is sponsored by international law firm Taylor Wessing.
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 will showcase the work of some of the most talented emerging young photographers, alongside that of established professionals, photography students and gifted amateurs. Selected anonymously from an open competition, the diversity of styles reflects the international mix of entrants as well as the range of approaches to the portrait genre, encompassing editorial, advertising and fine art images. The judges have selected 60 portraits for the exhibition from nearly 6,000 submissions entered by 2,401 photographers. The exhibition will run from 11 November 2010 through to 20 February 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
As well as the first-prize winner and three runners-up, the exhibition will feature the ELLE Commission. For the second year running, ELLE magazine will commission a photographer selected for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition to shoot a feature story. The ELLE Commission was judged by the fashion magazine's editor-in-chief, Lorraine Candy, together with the art director, Tom Meredith, and picture editor, Hannah Ridley.
With its substantial prize fund and high-profile exhibition and tour, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize continues the Gallery's long tradition of championing the very best contemporary portrait photography. The following four photographers have been shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010:

Jeffrey Stockbridge for Tic Tac and Tootsie (twin sisters Carroll and Shelly McKean) from the series Nowhere but Here

Jeffrey Stockbridge, born 1982 in Woodbine, Maryland, moved to Philadelphia to study photography at Drexel University in 2002. Stockbridge's shortlisted photograph is of Tic Tac and Tootsie, 20-year-old twin sisters Carroll and Shelly McKean taken in Kensington, North Philadelphia. The twin sisters, who live on the street and suffer from insomnia, are both addicted to Xanex and have resorted to prostitution to supply their habit. Stockbridge says: ‘Enduring unthinkable pain on a daily basis, the sisters are both incredibly strong and weak at the same time. Caught in the grip of their addiction, they do whatever it takes to survive, except for getting clean.' Upon graduating in 2005, Stockbridge was placed as runner-up in the New York Times Magazine's ‘Capture the Times' photography competition for his series on abandoned houses in Philadelphia, titled Occupied. He has exhibited widely in the US since graduation and received many grants and awards for his projects documenting urban blight in Philadelphia.