Spencer Murphy wins 2013 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize
The £12,000 award was presented to Spencer Murphy at the National Portrait Gallery tonight as a selection of this year’s entries went on show at the gallery in London.
“Taken at Kempton Park Racecourse the winning portrait of Katie Walsh was photographed whilst shooting a series of jump jockeys’ portraits for Channel Four’s The Original Extreme Sport campaign,” says the gallery.
“I was keen to include Katie,” said Murphy of the portrait. “I wanted to show both her femininity and the toughness of spirit she requires to compete against the best riders in one of the most demanding disciplines in horse racing. I chose to shoot the series on large format film, to give the images a depth and timelessness that I think would have been hard to achieve on a digital camera.”
This is the seventh time the work of the London-based photographer has been exhibited at the Gallery’s annual photographic exhibition and last year Murphy’s portrait of actor Mark Rylance won him Third Prize.
There were three other prizes from the 2013 shortlist awarded at the National Portrait Gallery. Giles Price came second for Kumbh Mela Pilgrim Mamta Dubey and infant. Anoush Abrar received the third prize for her portrait of Kofi Annan, and Dorothee Deiss came fourth for The Twins.
Started out doing photography at the age of 6 using an uncle's old 1940 kodak brownie box camera. At 15 years of age, I decided to buy my very own 1975 Praktica SLR camera. I now shoot with a Nikon D850. I do unpaid TFP and commercial paid work.