‘They're going to see who I am': Top shots from the National Photographic Portrait Prize
Our pick of National Photographic Portrait Prize finalists salutes the stoic, the stubborn, the singular and the strong.
Megan's Place, 2024
Megan is my friend and neighbour. Her life blends the ordinary with the extraordinary. Against the backdrop of her traditional weatherboard house in regional Victoria, Megan stands stoically with one of her rescue camels while her daughter bounces energetically on the trampoline. This moment captures the elements of both domesticity and adventure that encapsulate her life. Rebecca Polonski
Thelma Plum, 2024
I made this picture with Gamilaraay musician Thelma Plum on Wilyakali Country last winter. The image was taken using a Rolleicord camera on the Mundi Mundi Plains near Broken Hill, where I live. We spent three days photographing throughout far west NSW, making a series of shots for Plum's album I'm Sorry, Now Say It Back. Em Jensen
Sonny Jane Wise, 2025
My work is often playful, but also aims to challenge. Sonny Jane is a queer, non-binary, disabled and neurodivergent advocate and writer, who says their 'defiant' tattoo is 'a commitment to resist systems that pathologise our minds, bodies and queerness. When people look at me, they're going to see who I am.' Bri Hammond
Untitled #01 (Code Black/Riot), 2024
Code Black/Riot is a collaboration with First Nations youths in far north Queensland, which interrogates a system that targets and imprisons them from the age of 10. The youths prefer to conceal their faces to avoid being identified. Hoda Afshar
The Sky, 2025
Grace Tame is extraordinary, devoting her life to advocating for survivors of child sexual abuse. There's so much more to this portrait; a ripple on an ocean beneath that holds far more than it reveals. Stuart Spence
Britney and Kayleb, 2024
Kayleb paints up his partner, Britney, at the Waagan Galga Corroboree on Wonnarua Country [in the Hunter Valley, NSW]. Later, they dance together to display the depth of love and loss they have experienced. Culture is a powerful healer. Marcus Rowsell
Diamond in the Sky, 2024
As part of my series Deep Heat, I took this portrait 'with' Antony Sinni, a non-binary friend and artist on Larrakia Land, Garramilla [in the Darwin region, NT]. I highlight 'with' because making an image like this is both individual and deeply collaborative: experiencing what it is to be within a moment of vulnerability, connected by the sand, sky and the lens. In the series I use photography to explore my complex relationship with gender and masculinity, creating an opportunity for healing and evolution. Matt Sav
Self portrait collecting dust, 2025
This photo captures the intimate chaos of a life lived in one space, my childhood bedroom [in western Sydney], for 34 years. Surrounded by a tapestry of trinkets and the quiet clutter of everyday life, my self portrait reflects the intersection of nostalgia and the present. The disorder becomes a tangible reminder of time passing, of a personal history that clings to the space, the room itself as much a part of my identity as the person within it. Tom Zust
The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2025 exhibition, featuring the 48 selected finalists, will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra from August 16 to October 12.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
Comedy was just a hobby for Atsuko – then three years ago, ‘things happened'
This story is part of the August 9 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories. Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we're told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they're given. This week he speaks to Atsuko Okatsuka. The Japanese-Taiwanese-American comedian, 37, was named Best Comedy Debut of 2022 by The New York Times for her stand-up special, The Intruder. Her latest release is Father. POLITICS Your maternal great-grandfather was a pro-independence Taiwanese politician whose son – your grandfather – was assassinated by the Kuomintang. Did you grow up knowing these stories? My family doesn't talk about a lot of things; it gives me bits and pieces and then I have to be a detective about it … with a comedian's brain. I don't know if it's an Asian family thing, but we're all forced to be Sherlock Holmes because everyone's just trying to swallow what happened in the past and keep it down. Your comedy is laugh-out-loud, but you also talk about your family history and some of it's heavy. How do you make that material approachable? Oh, I have to remember to chase the funny. Like when I tried to give my grandma a bath recently, it was hard. I was nude. I can laugh about it, but for someone else hearing it … they might need more jokes. What do you think the US gets right, compared with other countries? We legalised weed in a lot of the states and I think that's correct. Has there ever been a serial killer on weed? Not that I can think of. You'd be caught way too easily. Or you'd be laughing on your way to murder someone and be way too loud. What does the US get wrong? We're too big! Too big means more people, which means too many different opinions. SEX If you could get into a time machine to meet Atsuko as a kid, and have a pep talk with her about sex, what would you say to her? I don't know. I don't really know kids. I don't talk to any kids. We don't have kids. I'm not friends with any kids. Why would I be friends with kids? That's creepy. Which reminds me: you recently posted a fun video documenting your husband, Ryan, getting a vasectomy. Apparently, they call it a 'pipe cut' in Japan.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
‘It paid in the end': The family that bankrolled AC/DC – and still owns its catalogue
This story is part of the August 9 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories. It's a 50-year showbiz relationship, as enduring as any of AC/DC's timeless hits, yet the bond between the band's founding brothers, Malcolm and Angus Young and the late music impresario, Ted Albert, who helped make them famous, seems destined to remain shrouded in mystery. Ahead of AC/DC's upcoming tour of Australia in November and December – the band sold 320,000 tickets on one day alone in June – the low-key, Sydney-based Albert family refuses, albeit politely, to discuss any of the Young brothers: neither Angus, now 70, nor Malcolm, who died in 2017, aged 64, nor their older brother, George, founder of The Easybeats, who died just three weeks before him at 70. This is despite the Youngs playing an intrinsic role in the Albert family's enormous impact on the Australian entertainment industry. Ted's great-grandfather, Swiss émigré Jacques Albert, went from selling watches and harmonicas in the 19th century to owning a media empire – originally called J Albert & Son, later becoming Albert Productions – that encompassed radio and television. Ultimately, it signed some of the biggest rock and pop acts to come out of Australia, including AC/DC in June 1974. Ted died young – of a heart attack in 1990 at the age of 53 – and in 2016 his family sold Albert Productions to the German music giant BMG. Despite exiting the recording industry, though, it retained ownership of its prize jewel: AC/DC's music catalogue, which includes, of course, everything the brothers ever wrote, including mega-hits T.N.T. (1975), Highway To Hell (1979) and You Shook Me All Night Long (1980). It ranks as one of the most valuable catalogues in the world, reported to be on par with that of British super-group Pink Floyd, which sold last year for $US400 million. The band's music still regularly features in movie soundtracks and commercials, generating substantial publishing fees. 'There's no doubt the AC/DC catalogue has been the Albert family's cash-cow for the past 50 years,' says music biographer Jeff Apter, who wrote Malcolm Young: The Man Who Made AC/DC. It's the gift that keeps on giving. Loading In 2010, journalist Jane Albert – Ted's niece – touched on the enduring relationship in her book House of Hits, revealing how Ted Albert bankrolled AC/DC for almost a decade before turning a profit. 'For him, it was a long-term investment,' Angus Young told her, 'but it paid in the end.' Today, the family's focus is the Ted Albert Foundation, which funds 'positive social outcomes through the power of music'.
The Age
a day ago
- The Age
‘They're going to see who I am': Top shots from the National Photographic Portrait Prize
This story is part of the August 9 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories. Our pick of National Photographic Portrait Prize finalists salutes the stoic, the stubborn, the singular and the strong. Megan's Place, 2024 Megan is my friend and neighbour. Her life blends the ordinary with the extraordinary. Against the backdrop of her traditional weatherboard house in regional Victoria, Megan stands stoically with one of her rescue camels while her daughter bounces energetically on the trampoline. This moment captures the elements of both domesticity and adventure that encapsulate her life. Rebecca Polonski Thelma Plum, 2024 I made this picture with Gamilaraay musician Thelma Plum on Wilyakali Country last winter. The image was taken using a Rolleicord camera on the Mundi Mundi Plains near Broken Hill, where I live. We spent three days photographing throughout far west NSW, making a series of shots for Plum's album I'm Sorry, Now Say It Back. Em Jensen Sonny Jane Wise, 2025 My work is often playful, but also aims to challenge. Sonny Jane is a queer, non-binary, disabled and neurodivergent advocate and writer, who says their 'defiant' tattoo is 'a commitment to resist systems that pathologise our minds, bodies and queerness. When people look at me, they're going to see who I am.' Bri Hammond Untitled #01 (Code Black/Riot), 2024 Code Black/Riot is a collaboration with First Nations youths in far north Queensland, which interrogates a system that targets and imprisons them from the age of 10. The youths prefer to conceal their faces to avoid being identified. Hoda Afshar The Sky, 2025 Grace Tame is extraordinary, devoting her life to advocating for survivors of child sexual abuse. There's so much more to this portrait; a ripple on an ocean beneath that holds far more than it reveals. Stuart Spence Britney and Kayleb, 2024 Kayleb paints up his partner, Britney, at the Waagan Galga Corroboree on Wonnarua Country [in the Hunter Valley, NSW]. Later, they dance together to display the depth of love and loss they have experienced. Culture is a powerful healer. Marcus Rowsell Diamond in the Sky, 2024 As part of my series Deep Heat, I took this portrait 'with' Antony Sinni, a non-binary friend and artist on Larrakia Land, Garramilla [in the Darwin region, NT]. I highlight 'with' because making an image like this is both individual and deeply collaborative: experiencing what it is to be within a moment of vulnerability, connected by the sand, sky and the lens. In the series I use photography to explore my complex relationship with gender and masculinity, creating an opportunity for healing and evolution. Matt Sav Self portrait collecting dust, 2025 This photo captures the intimate chaos of a life lived in one space, my childhood bedroom [in western Sydney], for 34 years. Surrounded by a tapestry of trinkets and the quiet clutter of everyday life, my self portrait reflects the intersection of nostalgia and the present. The disorder becomes a tangible reminder of time passing, of a personal history that clings to the space, the room itself as much a part of my identity as the person within it. Tom Zust The National Photographic Portrait Prize 2025 exhibition, featuring the 48 selected finalists, will be on display at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra from August 16 to October 12.
