11 November,2014:Â Fashion photographer David Titlow has won the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize for a shot of his baby son meeting a dog for the first time.
The composition was captured by Titlow the morning after a large midsummer party in Sweden and has won the former musician a £12,000 prize
Second place was awarded to Jessica Fulford-Dobson for her portrait of a young Afghani girl with a skateboard.
A photo of nine-year-old Estonian twins by Birgit Puve came third.
Of his winning shot, Titlow said: “Everyone was a bit hazy from the previous day’s excess.
“My girlfriend passed our son to the subdued revellers on the sofa – the composition and back light was so perfect that I had to capture the moment”.
Head judge Sandy Nairne, who is director of the National Portrait Gallery, called Titlow’s portrait a “fascinating and compelling image”.
Skateistan
After sifting through more than 4,000 submissions from 1,793 photographers, the judges selected just 59 portraits for an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.
The runner-up, freelance photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson, documented Afghan girls who attend Skateistan – an NGO born out of a small skateboarding school that met around an old, disused fountain in Kabul.
It now provides education for children, teaching leadership and cultural awareness.
“It is here that, for a few hours a week, they are able to have some semblance of a childhood in a place that is detached from the war and their working life on the streets,” said Fulford-Dobson
Third-placed Puve selected her competition entry from a book she was working on, looking at twins and triplets living in Estonia.
She visited Braian and Ryan at their great grandmother’s house in the countryside outside the capital Tallinn.
A £1,000 prize for fourth place went to Blerim Racaj for his photo Indecisive Moment, which shows a group of Kosovan teenagers sitting at the base of the National Library, a location chosen by the sitters as their ‘escape zone’.
The John Kobal New Work Award was awarded to Laura Pannack for her photograph Chayla at Shul, a portrait of a young Jewish girl.
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2014 exhibition is on from 13 November – 22 February.
Source:BBC
