2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize

Exhibition Review: Photography | Brian Rope

2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize | Various Artists

National Portrait Gallery, Canberra | 16 August – 12 October 2025

Then touring nationally - Cairns, Mount Gambier, Geraldton & Horsham | between 6 December 2025 & 26 January 2027

Now in its 18th year, the National Photographic Portrait Prize supports and celebrates photographic portraiture in Australia. There are many great works in this exhibition of finalists, only some of which I will discuss here.

The winner for 2025 is Untitled #01 (from the series Code Black/Riot) 2024 by Hoda Afshar, a Naarm/Melbourne-based visual artist whose practice focuses on the intricate relationships between politics and aesthetics, knowledge and representation, visibility and violence. All participants in the series were invited to use a means of their own choosing to conceal their identities while making a personal statement. The three First Nations youngsters in this image chose to conceal their faces to avoid being identified by the youth justice system.

Untitled #01 (from the series Code Black/Riot) 2024 © Hoda Afshar

 

When we viewed the exhibition, both my companion and I observed that there were numerous images of (and by) members of the LGBTQIA+ and Indigenous Australian communities. Amongst them is Hilary Wardhaugh’s Zev and Nick, 2025, their relationship revealed partly by the image and also by the accompanying artist statement. Mary-Lou Orliyarli Divilli’s Langi, 2024, is a portrait of her niece Violet, which “personifies the pride that goes with belonging, skills, knowing about your heritage and living within your culture.” Gerwyn Davies is a queer artist who works across photography, textile, and costume. He takes a “performative approach to photographic portraiture, exploring self-representation, camp aesthetics and kitsch Australiana.” His Bather, 2024, is a delightful example of that.

Zev and Nick, 2025 © Hilary Wardhaugh

Langi, 2024 © Mary-Lou Orliyarli Divilli

 

Bather, 2024 © Gerwyn Davies

T W Baker’s image Waiting on the Wet, 2024 has an interesting back story. It was taken in between massive afternoon downpours. A roll of Italian, medium-format cinema film jammed in Baker’s camera, but he managed to salvage and store it in a light-tight pouch away from the brutal sun and humidity. Two days later that pouch was opened by a curious member of the Darwin Airport security team. A week later, after processing the film in Sydney, it appeared that the harsh Top End of Australia had left its mark.

Waiting on the wet, 2024 © T W Baker

Jennie Groom’s Lola in utero, 2024 is a very different image of pregnancy. Indeed, a most unusual portrait. It is both clever and effective, a fine monochrome study.

Lola in utero, 2024 © Jennie Groom

 

Laura Zviedre’s Hands, 2024 is a delightful portrayal of a child - one of his hands holding his parents’ hands whilst his other one rests on his mother’s growing belly. It is all about love.

Hands, 2024 © Laura Zviedre

Back in 1995, Raoul Slater and his father Peter produced a lavishly illustrated book, Photographing Australia's Birds. More recently, he has been working in the medium of wet plate collodion, the pre-eminent photographic technology of the 1860s. His selected finalist work Muni, 2024 is a fine example of that medium.

Muni, 2024 - Raoul Slater

There are two other artworks that I found myself studying for lengthy periods of time. Michael Cook’s Individuation – Persona 2024 and Dida Sundet’s Philomela 2024. Cook’s works interrogate the legacy of colonisation and invite viewers to experience roles in reversal and histories re-written. This particular artwork ponders his life and that of his friend and artistic collaborator, Joey Gala. It recreates a scene from Greco-Roman mythology that depicts rape and is my favourite work in the exhibition. Through feminist intervention, it “alters perspective and challenges established gendered tropes.” Again, there is so much to see – movement in the woman’s arms, cyanotypes in the fabric, a toy held by a hand under the food-laden structure, and much more.

Individuation - Persona, 2024 © Michael Cook

Philomela, 2024 © Dida Sundet

Overall, this is a splendid exhibition, perhaps the best selection of finalists yet in this annual major Prize. Whilst we do not know what other works were amongst the thousands not selected (except for our own if we entered), the judges are to be commended for their 48 choices – all of which can be seen online here.

This review is also available on the author's blog here.