David Prichard has won first prize in the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2021 for Tribute to Indigenous Stock Women, his series of portraits of First Nations women who spent most of their working lives on cattle stations in Far North Queensland. The winner of the £15,000 first prize was announced today, Monday 8 November, at the award ceremony held at Cromwell Place in South Kensington.
Second prize was awarded to Pierre-Elie de Pibrac for Hakanai Sonzai, a series of portraits taken in Japan focused on people who exhibited fortitude in the face of adversity. Katya Ilina was awarded third prize for David, taken from a series of portraits that celebrate positive body image and question notions of masculinity and femininity by highlighting their fluidity.
The winning portraits are now on display in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2021 exhibition at Cromwell Place, in South Kensington, London from the 10 November 2021 until 2 January 2022, while the Gallery’s building in St Martin’s Place is closed for major redevelopment works. The exhibition features 54 portraits from 25 different artists, selected for display by a panel of judges including Misan Harriman, photographer and Chair of the Southbank Centre; Mariama Attah, curator of Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool; and Dr Susan Bright, curator and writer.
£15,000 First Prize: David Prichard for the series Tribute to Indigenous Stock Women
Born in 1966, David Prichard studied photography at Sydney Technical College and has worked in film and photography in Australia, Cuba and Brazil. He was a finalist in the National Portrait Prize, Australia (2018) and his earlier series, Indigenous Rodeo Riders, can be seen in a permanent installation in Normanton, Queensland. This is the first time he has entered a work for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.
Prichard’s series, Tribute to Indigenous Stock Women, presents portraits of First Nations women who spent most of their working lives on cattle stations in Far North Queensland. Their physically demanding labour as stock women involved a range of duties, from cooking and other homestead chores, to maintaining the welfare of the livestock, often on horseback. The cultural and social history of stock women has gone almost completely unrecorded. Reflecting on the series, David said, “I have always been respectful of cultural and social sensitivities and subsequently built trust with the community, which led me to be invited to photograph the women. The project is not about me. I am only the vehicle for the women to tell their stories.”