Best of – Photography Awards

photography

Zanele Muholi

Hasselblad Award

Zanele Muholi is the winner of the 2026 Hasselblad Award. Muholi, was born in Umlazi, Durban and now lives and works between Johannesburg and Cape Town. The photographer’s work centres visibility, claiming respect for Black queer subjects using the language of classical photography. In a statement, they passed credit to their subjects: "This prize is not mine alone. I carry it with the many faces, names, and histories that have trusted me with their stories. From Umlazi to every space where Black LGBTQIA+ people continue to fight to exist freely, this recognition affirms that our lives are worthy of being seen – not as statistics, not as shadows, but as full human beings. For years, my work has been about visibility and resistance. It has been about creating an archive so that no one can say, ‘We did not know.’ When this honour comes, I receive it on behalf of my community; those who have been erased, those who are still here, and those who are yet to see themselves reflected with dignity." 

Image: Julile I Parktown, Johannesburg, 2016. © Zanele Muholi. Courtesy Yancey Richardson, New York and Southern Guild, Cape Town.

photography

Rene Matić

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize

Rene Matić, the 29-year old London-based artist, who was nomiated for the Turner Prize last year, has won the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026. Rene Matić was awarded the Prize for their 2025 exhibition “AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH”, at CCA Berlin, Germany. Featuring newly produced photographs, installations and sound pieces, “AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH” is rooted in identity and belonging, subculture, class and family. Matić’s diaristic, snapshot-like photography captures everyday moments with poetic intimacy. The photographs, combined with collected objects, film and sound, form a vivid and layered portrait of contemporary life. 

Image: Rene Matić, Jabari Gooden memorial flowers, Peckham, London, 2022.
 © Rene Matić. Courtesy the Artist and Arcadia Missa, London.

photography

Wolfgang Tillmans

Roswitha Haftmann Prize

German contemporary artist and photographer Wolfgang Tillmans is the winner of the Roswitha Haftmann Prize 2026. Throughout his career Wolfgang Tillmans has challenged the potentiality of making pictures and has brought a new kind of subjectivity to photography. In 2000, he became the first photographer and the first non-British artist to win the prestigious Turner Prize. His body of work spans traditional genres — such as portraiture, still lifes, and landscapes — while seamlessly integrating camera-less abstraction, three-dimensional installations, video, sound, and political activism. Tillmans expands conventional ways of approaching photography and addresses the fundamental question of what it means to create pictures in an increasingly image-saturated world. 

Image: Wolfgang Tillmans, Paper Drop (Star) (2006). Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin, Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, Maureen Paley, London, David Zwirner, New York. © Centre Pompidou.

photography

Mallory Lowe Mpoka

Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles

Belgian-Cameroonian photographer Mallory Lowe Mpoka is the winner of the Prix de la Photo Madame Figaro Arles 2026, for her project Cosmologie des héritières. Photographs, weavings, video: this constellation of works, presented by the Montreal art centre Occurrence as part of the Prix Découverte Fondation Louis Roederer, explores the ever-shifting notion of identity. From the war waged by colonial France against the Bamileke independence fighters to the artist’s designation as the new matriarch of her clan, her installation links personal and collective history. "Drawing on fragmentary family archives, orally transmitted accounts and speculative projections, her practice examines the way in which images contribute to the formation of the self," explains curator Nadine Hounkpatin. 

Image: Mallory Lowe Mpoka, In the Weft of Memory (detail) [Dans la trame de la mémoire], Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa, 2025. Cotton weaving and glass beads. Courtesy of the artist.

photography

Sabelo Mlangeni

Prix James Barnor

South African photographer Sabelo Mlangeni is the winner of the Prix James Barnor 2026, awarded annually to artists from different regions of Africa. Mlangeni is driven by his interest in the notions of community and communing, sharing intimately in their thoughts, feelings, stories and everyday lives. His practice is a continuous survey of the most challenging, beautiful and confounding aspects of the human experience. At the same time, George Mahashe received a special mention for his work, which lies at the intersection of anthropology, archiving and artistic creation. 

Image: Sabelo Mlangeni, Jenine, Kigoma, Lubumbashi, 2017, from the series
‘I Have Stopped Time’ A Family Portrait.

photography

Akari Takenobu

Prix Dior de la Photographie et des Arts Visuels
 pour Jeunes Talents

Akari Takenobu has been awarded the Prix Dior de la Photographie et des Arts Visuels pour Jeunes Talents 2026; with this year’s theme being ‘Face to Face’. The photographic medium remains central to Akari's work, engaging in a dialogue with collage and installation to complete what she calls "pseudo-experiments." After first photographing her own body to transform it into an image — thereby stripping it of its physicality — she cuts the image into fragments, which she then reassembles. By reconfiguring reality, Akari Takenobu questions the limits of perception and explores a meaningful interstice by blurring the boundary between the visible and the invisible. 

Image: Threshold © Akari Takenobu

photography

Alfredo Jaar

Prix Pictet

Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar is the winner of the 11th cycle of the Prix Pictet, whose theme was Storm. Alfredo Jaar was recognised for his 2025 series The End, which focuses on the Great Salt Lake in Utah, described by scientists as an ‘environmental nuclear bomb’. The lake is a keystone ecosystem in the western hemisphere but is being destroyed by excessive water extraction. About his series, Jaar said: "My objective is to show the tragic fate of the lake and simultaneously reveal its extraordinary beauty and potential. In spite of the dire situation we are in, I wanted to create images of great beauty and sadness. In the face of the magnitude of this tragedy, I decided to print these images in a small, unspectacular format, as a kind of visual whisper, a lament for our dying planet." 

Image: Alfredo Jaar, from The End series, 2025.

photography

Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Prix de Photographie de l’Académie des
 beaux-arts - William Klein

The Prix de Photographie de l’Académie des beaux-arts - William Klein 2025 was awarded to Finnish-American photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen. In his work, he explores the relationship between the body and nature, without any subsequent manipulation of any kind. Somewhere between reality and fiction, he reinvents the black-and-white self-portrait with graphic compositions in which the body becomes a tool for creating surprising visual constructions. Arno Rafael Minkkinen works alone and creates his images through his visual imagination and physical performance. Rarely able to see what his camera has seen at the moment of exposure, he is in almost all his shots his own assistant. 

Image: Arno Rafael Minkkinen, Fosters Pond, 1989 II.

photography

Marie Blampain

Grand Prix Picto de la Photographie de Mode

Marie Blampain is the winner of the Grand Prix Picto de la Photographie de Mode 2026. Born in 1992 in New Caledonia and currently based in Mexico, her work is rooted in a studio-based photographic practice, informed by existential reflection. She stages the human body and familiar situations to reveal moments of transition, transformation and becoming. Her winning series, Fortuitous Witness, deliberately suspends individual identity in favour of creating a space for the viewer to project themselves onto the subjects through their positioning and presence. By contrasting the ordinary with visual impact, the series focuses on recollection rather than nostalgia, thereby embedding personal memory within a shared experience. 

Image: Fortuitous Witness © Marie Blampain