The National Portrait Gallery

As soon as we entered the National Portrait Gallery we headed straight for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Prize. I was extremely excited to see this work and which photographs were thought to be the best. There were 60 featured photographers. As I looked at each piece I began to get more and more frustrated and disturbed. I was not impressed at all. I know, personally, that a good and dynamic portrait that can stand alone without a description or artist statement is very difficult to achieve, but most of the images were just not well done. The lighting was sub par in some of them, in others the color balance was noticeably off, and a few were just down right boring. Some of the portraits were so similar to many I've seen before of African children, dancers, Middle Eastern women, etc. A lot of the stories behind the images were compelling, but the actual portraits did not speak for themselves or evoked much emotion. It was kind of a let down. Pate Meinzer's Cowboy, Benjamin Texas was successful in my eyes because it showed the beauty of a dynamic personality and portrait. The image is of a rugged looking cowboy sitting on a bed in a frilly decorated room. It shows the rough exterior of being a hard working cowboy but reveals the private, more contemplative side as it is the room he shares with his wife. I thought that the winners' work was better than most of the other work. The 2nd place winner Panayiotis Camprou was quite daring as his work was an environmental portrait of his wife that was originally not for public display. But now her vagina is on display for everyone to see.