New exhibit for prize winning photography falls short, and the true winners miss out.
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) feels it is exempt from presenting new ideas within the art world. It has failed on many an occasion, and this time is no different.
The gallery has had its moments, but this exhibit is not one of them. Following renovations to public relations campaign around it does not justify its so-called metamorphosis. Within the industry, that change was embraced, though mostly on a superficial level.
The latest round of photographers to be shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize (TWPP) are of course technically proficient at what they do. The vast majority of visuals on show read like an Instagram account, so much so that I felt like I had stepped into my phone. Stood in frame with an aesthetic that broadly mimics that of what you can see almost everywhere, the compositions are limited by fear of stepping outside of a social media construct.
There were many works that were elegantly composed, but that does not necessarily allude to ‘award winning’. I will highlight the one entry I felt was worth visiting the show for: Serena Brown’s portrait taken at her grandmother’s home in Ghana, titled ‘me nana fie’, is a photo that is deserving of recognition. Though it didn’t win, and we felt it deserved to.
The exhibition’s set-up did no justice to the images on display; in fact it was lacking, void of the rebrand such competitions should offer. The art of photography, which has suffered dearly at the hands of the internet’s copycat era, is failed when contests like these transform art into a pageant.
The TWPP has become a junction of limited works executed by poor curation and judgement. This latest exhibit panders to a certain audience without revealing anything new and serves as a vessel for highlighting repetitive ideas prevalent in the photography world.
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