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A brutal nomadic sport, quiet childhood reveries and stark human endurance define the photographs that wowed this year’s judges
Tue 13 Jan 2026 08.00 CET
Kartikeya Manan: Patience (1st place single image winner)
‘A man hangs on to an open window in search of some respite from the midsummer heat of an overcrowded bus. This photograph comes from a project that explores the daily commute of public transport users in New Delhi.’ For more on the award winners, visit lensculture.com. All quotes by the photographers
Todd Antony: Buzkashi (1st place series winner)
‘Buzkashi, which translates to “goat pulling” in Persian, is the wild, brutal sport of Tajikistan and central Asia. Think polo – but with hundreds of riders and a headless goat standing in as a ball. Rooted in the nomadic cultures of central Asia and played for hundreds of years, riders battle for control of the goat. The rulebook is less of a book and closer to a couple of sentences, with the match often overflowing into the crowd – something I can testify to first-hand. Games can last hours until a rider hauls the goat across a hay-marked goal line in the dirt’
Maurice Wolf: Sheep Drive in Tusheti (Juror pick)
‘The shepherds make this journey in early October just before snow starts to fall. The end goal is to reach the winter pastures in the mild climate of Vashlovani in eastern Georgia. Cattle and shepherds gather for days in the lead-up, accompanied by their dogs. They kill the time by telling stories and drinking chacha – a Georgian liquor’
Francisco Gonzalez Camacho: You Can’t Enter the Same River Twice (2nd place series winner)
‘This project explores the concept of impermanence and looks at the landscape as an agent of transformation. Growth and ruin intertwine – a pulse of becoming and unraveling, between absence and presence, the landscape in flux’
Nina Hauben: Silent Dialogue (2nd place single image winner)
‘Marking the slow passage from stillness to life. The boundaries between memory and reality begin to dissolve. Absence takes on form. Silence becomes a language of its own’
Scott Offen: Grace (Juror pick)
‘This project, made with my partner Grace, examines the dynamics of authorship, gender, ageing and representation. Together, we create scenes that explore the meeting point between the real, the symbolic and the psychological. In this series, the rural landscape of New England is more than a backdrop. It is a character, sometimes playful and occasionally sinister, like in Alice in Wonderland. The ageing female body is often rendered invisible in art history and popular culture. Grace explores how it can be repositioned as a site of power, mystery and authorship’
Kennon Guerry: Weston Skater – Emma in the Doorway (3rd place single winner)
‘This is an homage to Edward Weston’s 1936 image, Nude (Charis in the Doorway). The impulse to create photographs springs from my near desperate need to capture the details of the transformations of childhood. Anticipatory grief for what will be lost to growth and change has been one of many emotional experiences of motherhood for me. I grieve and celebrate every milestone. Photography is my balm; it lets me freeze my children in this moment while allowing me to release them with joy and gratitude into the next’
Anita Andrzejewska: Dancing Your Dream Awake (3rd place series winner)
‘This is a visual journey through space and time, inspired by the idea of life as pilgrimage. Through close personal relationships, I explore indigenous traditions, religions and customs, focusing on the universality of human experience, shared archetypes and that which unites us. Featuring 63 black-and-white photographs, the work evokes the mysterious cycles of life’
Jozef Macak: Steel Framed Stories (Juror pick)
‘Set in the steel industrial area of Lahore in Pakistan, this series captures the resilience, camaraderie and solitude of those who live and work within this harsh landscape. Amid towering beams and heavy machinery, labourers navigate a world of toil and endurance, yet fleeting moments of warmth and reflection emerge. The contrast between steel and humanity, routine and survival, drives the untold stories of those who not only build this environment but are also shaped by it’
Juul Kraijer: Untitled (Juror pick)
‘The heavy use of Photoshop and AI offers us shortcuts, but I prefer to stage my photographs myself – even if it involves putting live insects on the face of a model. I love the challenges involved in creating scenes in physical reality that exist on the brink of the impossible. For this photograph, a beautiful model from London and 10 jewel-like monarch butterflies reared by an entomologist met in my daylight studio in Rotterdam’
Karine Joly: L’Ame des Objets (Juror pick)
‘This series of objects speaks of nostalgia and the presence of absence in the materiality of things. The objects speak – and they speak to us. Beyond function or form, they are imbued with human consciousness becoming fragments of inner worlds, witnesses of life, echoes of past presences. Laden with meaning, they transform into symbols. Full of memories, they become emotions’
Md Tanveer Rohan: Blue Collar Workers of Bangladesh (Juror pick)
‘This project explores the daily lives of Bangladesh’s blue-collar workforce. Cloaked in a storm of dust, we see here a labourer carrying an enormous stack of bricks on his head – an everyday task in an industry built on unseen, unacknowledged effort. The image embodies a quiet but profound power: the endurance of those who, without machinery or recognition, hold up the foundations of development. It’s a stark reminder of the human cost behind every brick laid’Explore more on these topics
