Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery

One of the great events in the National Portrait Gallery’s calendar is the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, established in 2003. Amid all the prize exhibitions, this one does rather well - sometimes because of the celebrities in its frames: last year, a photograph of Mo Farah took centre-stage, and this year Anoush Abrar’s sober portrait of ex-UN head Kofi Annan is in the shortlist for the £12,000 prize to be announced on 12 November. 

The prize has also courted its share of controversy. Greek photographerPanayiotis Lamprou’s intimate semi-nude portrait of his wife in 2010 naturally stirred the media pot. And this time round the weird prize goes to German photographer Dorothee Deiss for The Twins – a curious picture of middle-aged twin sisters reclining together on a bed. Spencer Murphy’s portrait of jockey Katie Walsh is also one to look out for – the artist having won third prize for a memorable portrait of Mark Rylance in a previous competition. And then there’s Giles Price’s Kumbh Mela Pilgrim: having himself sustained injuries in the Gulf War in 1991 before retraining as a photographer, this image tells a harrowing and very personal story.

The exhibition will also show 60 other photographs, chosen from an international submission of over 5,000 images from more than 2,000 photographers. They have been chosen blind, to avoid bias during the selection, and they’re intended to cover many different kinds of image, from reportage to ‘art’ photography. This is because in the past, the Prize has been criticised for leaning too far in the arty direction, tending in the words of one critic to favour ‘washed out colours’ and ‘awkward poses’. Come and judge this year’s submissions for yourself.

Tickets: £3 (£2 concessions)

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