Top National Photographic Portrait Prize Winner Takes Home $30,000

Jun 16, 2023

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023 — Photographer Shea Kirk in front of his grand prize-winning image, ‘Ruby.’

The National Portrait Gallery in Australia has announced the winners of its annual National Photographic Portrait Prize competition. Photographer Shea Kirk has taken home the top prize, including a $30,000 cash prize and $20,000 worth of Canon equipment, courtesy of Canon Australia.

Kirk’s winning image, a portrait of his friend and fellow artist Emma Armstrong-Porter, who is herself also a National Photographic Portrait Prize finalist, is half of a stereoscopic pair that Kirk created as part of his ongoing series Vantages.

Warning: The full version of Kirk’s winning photo includes nudity and is featured below. Further, additional finalists from the competition include nudity.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023

“Over the past 6 years I have been inviting people over to my home studio to sit in front of simple backdrops and make portraits. This portrait is of my now good friend Emma, which we made together during our first meeting. I wanted to create the idea of the body as a record. We are our faces as much as we are our limbs, extremities, our nooks, and crannies. The self and sense of a person in a portrait for me is often thought of more than just a face and hands, it’s an essence of the whole,” says Kirk.

“When things feel right, I frame and focus through the ground glass. The shutters are closed, the apertures stopped down. main springs tensioned, film holders slid into the backs and from that point I’m able to stand beside the camera. It stands solitary as a witness, and I’m free to share the space with the sitter, looking at them with my own eyes as opposed to through a camera’s viewfinder. Once set, everything is very still as we wait for the right moment to trip the shutter. I often think about it as one moment in time stretched out,” Kirk explains.

“I’ve always struggled with the size of my body, from being extremely underweight to now being overweight. Over the past few years working with other photographers, making portraits, I’ve been processing my feelings about the transformation. I’m starting to feel more at home in my big queer body,” says Armstrong-Porter.

Of Kirk’s winning image, judges remark, “While Shea makes the portrait look effortless, this is a masterful and technically complex work where the sitter has no self-consciousness. It is as if the artist and sitter are participating equally in the transaction.”

Additional Winners

In addition to Kirk earning the top honor, two other finalists received special recognition. Renae Saxby was awarded the “Highly Commended” prize for her image, Bangardidjan 2022, a portrait of “proud Kine, Rembarrnga, and Dalabon woman Cindy Rostron on the road in remote Central Arnhem Land.” Rostron’s father, Victor, painted the buffalo skull strapped to the roof of the Rostron family car. Saxby’s prize is an Eizo ColorEdge CG2700S 27-inch monitor valued at nearly $4,000 in Australia.

Photographer David Cossini’s portrait of Ugandan man Godfrey Baguma won the 2023 Art Handlers Award. Cossini’s image is a striking portrait with vibrant colors. Baguma was born with a rare and painful physical deformity and was abandoned by his mother as a child. Now 57, Baguma has overcome the odds and has become an entertainer. Cossini is currently in Uganda, spending time with the Baguma family, who Cossini says are “thrilled to know one of his photos will be exhibited at such a prestigious gallery.”

Selected Finalists

Aside from the three winning images, there are 44 other portraits that were selected as finalists and will be featured in the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2023 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition runs from June 17 until October 2, 2023.