The 25 Finalists of the Wellcome Photography Prize Where Each Winner Receives $13,500

Matt Growcoot
A collage: Left, a microscope image of a textured spherical object; center, two people having a picnic on a rooftop with city buildings and a scenic backdrop; right, a man with medical electrodes and bandages on his head and arm.
Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025.

The Wellcome Photography Prize has unveiled its Top 25 entries, selected for the 2025 edition of the awards. The competition showcases powerful images that capture urgent global health challenges.

There are three awards: Striking Solo Photography; A Storytelling Series; and The Marvels of Scientific and Medical Imaging. Each photographer who tops these categories will receive $10,000 ($13,600), with all other finalists getting $1,000 (1,360).

This year’s image-makers explore subjects at all scales of life: from the first non-invasive image of microplastics beneath the skin, and surprisingly beautiful pollution particles collected from Brixton in South London, to the remote Peruvian Andes, where Indigenous farmers are blending ancestral knowledge with modern science to address water contamination.

Formerly known as the Wellcome Image Awards, the Wellcome Photography Prize has a 28-year legacy of championing image-makers who bring health, science, and medicine to life. The prize is open to all, and this year received submissions from over 100 countries, offering a breadth of perspectives from around the world. The Top 25 entries feature over 30 individuals from 18 countries, spanning Bangladesh, Brazil, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Myanmar, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Uganda, the UK, the US, and beyond.

Striking Solo Photography

Aerial view of a small house near a landscape with yellowish water blending into vivid orange and red, possibly due to pollution, with some trees and sparse grass surrounding the area.
In Beautiful Disaster, Alexandru Radu Popescu offers a different kind of landscape: a toxic lake in Romania, created by copper mine runoff, that has swallowed the former village of Geamăna. In 1977, 1,000 inhabitants were forcibly evacuated so that toxic waste could be stored there. Nonetheless, seen from above, it is eerily beautiful, with swirls of red and gold in poisoned water. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A dimly lit hallway with a closed door, illuminated by a bright, narrow beam of light streaming through the door's edge and casting a sharp L-shaped line on the dark wall and floor.
In ‘The Light Will Come’, Dora Grivopoulou captures shafts of coloured light emerging through an open door inside Dafi, a former psychiatric hospital in Athens. For Grivopoulou, the doorway is a threshold between confinement and freedom, and the light becomes a symbol of hope, something that transcends physical and psychological barriers. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A person lying on a bed with their shirt pulled up, exposing their stomach. Years from 2014 to 2022 are written in a pattern across their skin, and one hand is pulling down the waistband of their underwear.
In ‘Self, Five Years On,’ Georgie Wileman presents a stark self-portrait showing the surgical scars left by her battle with endometriosis, a condition that affects one in ten women and those assigned female at birth, yet remains underdiagnosed and underfunded. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A person with short hair stands confidently beside a tall wooden stool, wearing a sleeveless, open pinstripe vest and matching wide-leg pants. Their chest is partially exposed, displaying a top surgery scar and tattoos. The background is green.
‘Marks of majesty: Vanessa’, 2024
By Julia Comita and Stephanie Francis
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025
A man in a white shirt and hat pumps water into yellow jerry cans at a hand water pump in a rural village, with children and brick buildings in the background under a blue sky.
In ‘Musa’, Marijn Fidder documents a man in Uganda who contracted polio as a child. His story, told in his own words, reframes the lived experience of disability and his right to be seen. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A young man with a leg amputation sits on a low ledge, smiling joyfully, holding a cricket bat. Cricket stumps, a ball, and a wooden crutch rest beside him against a textured wall.
‘Cricket is my emotions’, 2024
By Ziaul Huque
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025
A group of people gathers around empty containers by a small well on cracked, parched earth, highlighting water scarcity in a drought-affected area.
Searching for Life by Sandipani Chattopadhyay takes us to a parched riverbed in West Bengal, where villagers dig through dry earth to collect the last traces of water. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A young person with light and dark patches of skin and curly hair sits in shallow water, looking up at the camera. They wear patterned swim trunks, and the background is rocky and dimly lit.
‘Pie-by-Sam’ 2024
By Reatile Moalusi
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025
A monk in orange robes sits on a wooden floor, reading a book in soft sunlight surrounded by traditional pots and jars inside a dim, rustic room.
Resilience Artist by Pyaephyo Thetpaing shows a craftsman in Myanmar painting and carving using only his left foot, having lost his other limbs. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
An elderly person with gray hair wears a vibrant half-mask made of flowers and leaves on the left side of their face, gazing thoughtfully at the camera. They wear a red and black plaid shirt.
In ‘Transparent Curtains’, Oded Wagenstein captures Mordechai Zilberman sat wearing his late partner Aryeh’s clothes, holding a flower-decorated mask. After sixty years together, Aryeh’s death left Mordechai in deep grief. When he later moved into a nursing home, he concealed his sexuality out of fear of rejection. Part of a wider series exploring the experiences of LGBTQ+ elders, the image speaks to the profound loneliness and exclusion that can accompany old age, especially when seeking care and community. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A man with a beard wears medical electrodes and sensors on his bare shoulder and head, which is wrapped with bandages and medical tape; colorful wires are connected to the sensors.
With his head wrapped in gauze and electrodes trailing from his scalp, in Stereo EEG Self-Portrait, Muir Vidler captures himself mid-treatment for a form of epilepsy that cannot be supported by medication. | | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Two people have a picnic on a rooftop, sitting on a blanket with food and books. Behind them is a large tapestry with a colorful nature scene, and city buildings are visible in the background.
In Urban Travel, Mithail Afrige Chowdhury captures a rooftop in Dhaka, where close to half of the population are climate migrants. Here, a mother stages a picnic for her daughter who longs to experience nature – a quiet act of resistance and imagination. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025

A Storytelling Series

Several scuba divers swim around dome-shaped underwater structures on the ocean floor, with bubbles rising to the surface in the deep blue water. The scene suggests an underwater research or habitat site.
Giacomo d’Orlando’s Nemo’s Garden offers a vision of the future: the world’s first underwater greenhouse, where crops grow without soil and contain greater antioxidants than the same plants grown on land. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A woman in a long skirt stands by a wooden fence in a leafy garden. Next to her, several ultrasound images are spread out on a patterned surface, one highlighted by a beam of light.
‘The Loss Mother’s Stone’ by Nancy Borowick offers sensitive insight into the experience of stillbirth. Photographing mothers alongside objects that symbolise the children they lost, she creates space for stories that are rarely told. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
An elderly woman rests in a patterned armchair with her legs up, eyes closed, and a magazine on her lap. The cozy living room around her is filled with personal items, plants, and warm natural light.
In ‘I Spend 150 Hours Alone Each Week’, Madeleine Waller photographs her mother navigating daily life in rural Australia. Her portraits are full of stillness and tenderness, capturing daily rituals: a crossword, a walk to feed a retired racehorse, her quiet companionship with a house spider. Each image reflects the emotional depth of her attachment to home, to memory, and to her personal routines. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A woman with long dark hair, partially covering her face, stands against a textured background. She wears an elaborate, layered red dress with wavy, cut-out patterns resembling flowing petals or fabric.
‘A thousand cuts’, 2023
By Sujata Setia
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025
A person in a hat and jacket stands beside a narrow stream in a grassy mountain valley, with cloudy skies and distant snow-capped peaks in the background.
Many of the Prize’s photographers explore the profound consequences of climate change on health, while also documenting how people adapt with creativity and resilience. In ‘A Dream to Cure Water’, Ciril Jazbec follows Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes as they purify contaminated glacial runoff using aquatic plants and basic scientific tools. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025

The Marvels of Scientific and Medical Imaging

Colorized microscopic image showing needle-like blue and teal crystals growing inside a round, crater-like purple and pink surface, representing a close-up view of mineral or crystal formation.
In Cholesterol in the Liver, Steve Gschmeissner shows crystals forming inside cells, microscopic shapes with life-threatening consequences. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A highly magnified image of a plant flower bud shows a textured, rounded structure with tightly packed, bumpy surfaces, appearing grayish and intricate against a blurred background.
Organoids by Oliver Meckes and Nicole Ottawa presents lab-grown uterine tissue, tiny structures that may one day replace the need for animal testing. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Abstract blue and white image resembling a circular shape with cloudy or speckled patterns, appearing like a textured watercolor or a stylized view of a planet or the moon.
In Brixton Road, Marina Vitaglione transforms London air pollution into ghostly cyanotypes, making the invisible tangible. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
Microscopic view of cross-sectioned plant cells stained blue and pink, forming a repeating floral-like pattern with circular arrangements and petal-like structures, surrounded by thin cell walls.
‘Blooming barrier’, 2024
By Lucy Holland
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025
A magnified image of a blue, oval-shaped cell with clusters of small, bright orange-yellow dots scattered across its surface, set against a black background.
Jander Matos and Joaquim Nascimento’s Submarine Fever depicts a mosquito egg in vivid detail, highlighting how warming climates accelerate the spread of disease. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A brightly colored, textured sphere with intricate patterns is magnified under a microscope, appearing turquoise and red against a similarly patterned background.
‘Ice and Fire Chronics:
The Chagas Disease Invadee’, 2020
By Ingrid Augusto, Kildare Rocha de
Miranda and Vania da Silva Vieira
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025
Microscopic image showing a cluster of turquoise cells surrounded by branching, black lines resembling neural or vascular structures on a white background.
In Microplastics in Mammalian Tissue, P. Stephen Patrick and Olumide Ogunlade reveal the first non-invasive image of plastic particles embedded in living tissue, captured using a pioneering photoacoustic laser technique. | Courtesy of Wellcome Photography Prize 2025
A brightly colored, glowing microscopic image of a mouse brain with distinct regions shown in neon blue, green, pink, and yellow against a black background, highlighting intricate neural structures.
‘From butterflies to humans’, 2023
By Amaia Alcalde Anton
Courtesy of Wellcome
Photography Prize 2025

Based in London, England, Wellcome is a museum and library that “supports science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone.” The Wellcome Photography Prize 2025 exhibition will be held at the Francis Crick Institute in London from July 17 to October 18. More info here.

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