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.
The portrait, which is part of a larger project called Ideal Mother, features a sitter – Sonam – whom Wilson met through Instagram after asking for atypical mothers willing to be photographed. The artist’s ambition was to present sitters as more than just mothers, referring to all elements that contribute towards a whole person capable of many achievements.
Sonam is an unexpectedly masculine image of motherhood. The mother sits with her legs widely sprawled as her baby clings to her chest. She also has a direct and unsmiling gaze, close-cut hair and a moustache.
Sonam is a wig-maker by trade and we’re told she wears the false moustache as a statement of her career, as well as a reference to instances when she was encouraged to embrace her masculine features by friends and family.
The NPG said it was a portrait of balance, which broadened conversations on pregnancy and parenthood, and a visual of individuality and authenticity.
It said the judges felt the portrait was instantly eye-catching and challenged audience assumptions. The relationship between Sonam and her baby, and details revealing elements of her personality, were just some of the many layers of understanding in the image.
The £3,000 second prize went to the Australian photographer Adam Ferguson for three portraits captured during extended journeys into the Northern Territory and Western Australia, made for his project and new book Big Sky.
Made over a 10-year period, the series depicts the impact of globalisation and climate breakdown, in addition to the colonial legacy that underpins modern Australia against the backdrop of the romanticised outback.
The £2,000 third prize went to the Dutch photographer Tjitske Sluis for her series Out of Love, Out of Necessity, which documents the photographer’s mother during the final stages of her life, while Sluis cared for her.
Sluis, who came to photography through journalism, used her camera as a coping device during a period of grief and disorientation, while her mother, Teuntje, found a tension-relieving humour in being photographed.
The £8,000 photographic commission to create a new work for the NPG’s collection was awarded to the South African photographer Jesse Navarre Vos for his portrait Mom, I’ll follow you still.
It is from Vos’s series I’ll Come Following You, which depicts his mother, Edith Mavis Velk, who is in fact his biological paternal grandmother – his legal guardian since his birth and mother by adoption since Vos’s teens.
After a burglary at the family’s home in 2018, the previously self-reliant Edith was unable to look after herself. Vos’s shortlisted photograph depicts Edith pausing in a lift in the care facility she eventually entered.
The winning portraits will be on display at the NPG as part of the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2024 exhibition, which also includes the series Father by the artist Diana Markosian, and a newly unveiled portrait of the clean-air advocate Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah by last year’s winner of the Taylor Wessing photographic commission, Serena Brown.
The 2024 judging panel included the multimedia artist Pogus Caesar; the curators Alona Pardo and Lou Stoppard; and the NPG’s curator of photography Clare Freestone.
