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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders both past and present.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that this website contains images of deceased persons.

Living Memory

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2021

Previous exhibition
from Saturday 31 July 2021 until Sunday 16 January 2022
Drought story, 2020 Joel B. Pratley
Drought story, 2020 Joel B. Pratley. Courtesy of the artist. © The artist

The Living Memory National Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition is selected from a national field of entries, reflecting the distinctive vision of Australia's aspiring and professional portrait photographers and the unique nature of their subjects. This edition of the prize incorporates a year like no other: 2020. Accordingly, the title - Living Memory - acknowledges the period's seismic events. The winner for 2021 is

Drought Story by Joel B. Pratley

The Highly Commended Award goes to Julian Kingma for Tom at the Drain.

The Distinction Awards go to R.J Poole for Great conjunction and Jessica Hromas for Mark and Saskia cool off. The Distinction Awards are a new, specially tailored mentorship prize designed to continue the National Portrait Gallery’s commitment to developing and nurturing Australian portrait photography. The Art Handlers' Award goes to I'm just a suburban fashionista by Kristina Kraskov.

The People's Choice Award goes to Kristina Kraskov for his portrait I'm just a suburban fashionista.

For the 2021 Prize, judges Bill Henson (guest judge, Photographer), Nick Mitzevich (guest judge, Director, National Gallery of Australia), and Karen Quinlan (Director, National Portrait Gallery) selected 79 portraits from over 3000 entries. We thank everyone who submitted photographs for the Prize.

The exhibition catalogue is now available from The Curatoreum for $49.95.

79 finalists

1 Tom at the drain, 2020 Julian Kingma. Courtesy of the artist. © Julian Kingma. 2 Great conjunction, 2020 R J Poole. Courtesy of the artist. © The artist. 3 Mark and Saskia cool off, 2021 Jessica Hromas. Courtesy of the artist. © The artist. 4 I'm just a suburban fashionista, 2021 Kristina Kraskov. Courtesy of the artist. © The artist.

Related people

Karen Quinlan AM (curator)

Living Memory sponsors
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The National Portrait Gallery acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present. We respectfully advise that this site includes works by, images of, names of, voices of and references to deceased people.

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