Taylor Wessing

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008 showcases emerging young photographers through anonymous selection. Entries are currently being exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery.

James Stroud (above image) graduated in photography in 1999, and began to work on fashion photography. Since then, he has begun to do portrait work as well. His latest series, Dark Love, is based around body modification and tattooing. Images from it were shown in the first ever solo exhibition at St Pancras International station.

Steve Schofield's most recent series, Land of the Free, is made up of Diane Arbus-esque documentary portraits of quirky subjects in mundane surroundings. He describes it as "exploring the fascination that the British public has with American popular culture and the sub-cultural world of fandom." He shows people in their own homes and environments wearing costumes that they would be dressed in to attend fan events.

Lottie Davies has been a professional photographer working for a range of lifestyle and travel magazines since 2000 and has exhibited at various galleries. Memories & Nightmares is a series of portraits representing the subject’s early childhood memories or nightmares. Quints, shot on large format, was inspired by her friend Caroline’s nightmare in which she was pregnant with quintuplets. Davies used a model, Alicia, to stand in for the subject to allow herself greater freedom to interpret the story and the quints were modelled by Alicia’s niece, Marla.

Tom Stoddart began his photographic career on a local newspaper in the north-east. During his time as a photojournalist he has witnessed the war in Lebanon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela, the bloody siege of Sarajevo and the wars against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Notably, in 1997 Tony Blair gave Stoddart exclusive access to his election campaign, and his recent extensive work on Africa’s AIDS pandemic has been widely published and exhibited.

His shortlisted portrait is of Rupert Murdoch in his office at News International in Wapping to illustrate a story in Time magazine about his $5 billion acquisition of the Dow Jones & Company.

Peter Arnold first received recognition as a photographer through his macro photography of flowers. This photo, part of his South by South East series, was taken after his partner’s nephew entered a temple to become a ‘novice’ monk. The wild owl flew down from a tree, apparently by chance, and stayed with them for two weeks.

Hendrik Kerstens is a self-taught photographer who initially turned to a model close at hand, his daughter Paula. In his portraits Paula is always depicted as being austere, serene and illuminated with a characteristic ‘Dutch’ light. In September he will open his first solo New York exhibition at the Witzenhausen Gallery. Kersten’s short-listed portrait was conceived in New York when he noticed the excessive amount of plastic bags given away in shops. As a humorous reaction to this environmental problem he photographed the plastic bag in the style of a traditional seventeenth century cap.

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008 exhibition continues at the National Portrait Gallery until 15 Feb.