Dashing cowboys, a transgender storm chaser and a fetching mullet are among the subjects of these acclaimed photographs for the Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize 2026 Bale out … an image from the series Six Weeks Away (from the series Tajine Westerns), 2025 This portrait of Nour and Mohmed was made during an artists’ residency near the town of Erfoud in eastern Morocco. To get to the location, she took an 11-hour bus ride across the Atlas Mountains. Katie Hitchcock-Smith arranged a collaborative, western-themed photoshoot, with the cowboy hat brought from her home and a jacket and tent bought at a local market. _The Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize show is at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 5 November until 17 January_ Second prize winner Max Pattenden: Havannah, Lee Moor (from the series Men May Come and Men May Go, But I Go On Forever), 2025 This portrait of ten-year-old Havannah was taken in Lee Moor, a village on the edge of Dartmoor National Park.
Pattenden was photographing a Halloween party when he spotted her. Recognising her timeless appearance, he invited her to be photographed around the village. In this image, taken at the end of the shoot on a cold day, Havannah’s expression is subtle, defying definition.
Pattenden is also the recipient of the 2025 Eamonn Mccabe bursary supported by the Guardian Third prize winner James Clifford Kent: Neisser Yoel Gálvez Tabares, 16, poses at his home in Pinar del Río, Cuba, 2025 Neisser stands in full fencing regalia in his family’s living room. His face turns towards the only light source – open shutters letting in an even wash of daylight that illuminates his white jacket and breeches. Contrasting sharply with the elegant suit is the modest domestic interior.
Neisser stands between a bulky television and a landline telephone trailing to a tangle of wires below. The blue-green tones of the background wall reveal hurricane repair Winston Taylor Photographic Commission prize winner Marcie Docherty: PE (from the series In Pursuit of Muscle), 2026 Four men stand before an unassuming suburban building dressed as members of an American football team. Their jerseys, helmets and formation evoke the visual language of American high school sport, yet the illusion is quietly unsettling.
Wrestling shorts replace football trousers, polished leather shoes sit awkwardly over athletic socks, and the ordinary streetscape refuses the attempted construct Ellie Ramsden: A Young Elvis (from the series The Elvies), 2025 Known as the King in the 1950s and 1960s, Elvis Presley was one of the most culturally significant figures of the 20th century. Ellie Ramsden attended the Porthcawl Elvis Festival last year – the largest Elvis tribute event in the world. There she was endeared by this six-year-old boy sporting Presley’s rockabilly aesthetic (flared trousers, relaxed tailoring and slicked-back hair). _Ellie is the winner of the Joan Wakelin bursary 2026, jointly administered by the Guardian and the Royal Photographic Society_ In a work originally titled Spiegelwelten, German for ‘mirror worlds’, Julia Appa’s sitter looks into a mirror, her reflection locking eyes with the viewer.
The photograph prompts the eye to move upward. The sitter’s closely cropped face is countered by the mirror which affords a clear, although inverted, reflection. Using a simple, centuries-old prop in portrait practice, the Hamburg-based photographer alternates the viewer between mirrored realities Cheryl Newman: Untitled (from the series Six Weeks Away), 2025 London-based photographer Cheryl Newman turns the camera towards her daughter with the affectionate gaze of a proud mother.
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