British Journal of Photography and Nikon announce the winners of Female in Focus 2025

Celebrating Visionaries on the Edge of Change

A powerful new chapter in contemporary photography unfolds as Female in Focus x Nikon 2025 announces its winners, a global initiative led by British Journal of Photography in partnership with Nikon. Built on a shared commitment to supporting women and non-binary photographers, the program continues to spotlight perspectives that have historically been underrepresented across the industry while offering meaningful visibility on an international stage.

This year’s theme, On the Cusp, invited artists to explore moments of transition — personal, cultural, environmental, and technological. The two winning projects and 21 selected single images respond with striking sensitivity, capturing fragile thresholds where lives, identities, and landscapes hover between what is and what is about to become. Chosen from thousands of submissions, the selected works demonstrate not only technical excellence but also a remarkable ability to translate uncertainty and transformation into compelling visual narratives.

The exhibition will travel internationally, opening at 1014 Gallery in London from 24 April to 29 May, before continuing to International Centre for the Image in Dublin (PhotoIreland) from 10 September to 25 October, offering audiences across two cultural capitals the opportunity to experience these boundary-pushing works in person.

A Jury Reflecting the Breadth of Contemporary Photography

The selection was guided by an international panel of influential voices whose expertise spans publishing, curating, criticism, and artistic practice. Among them is Alessia Glaviano, Global Head of Vogue Italia and Director of PhotoVogue Festival, alongside Nancy Janes, Managing Director UK & Ireland at Hahnemühle.

They were joined by Dr Aleema Gray, Founder of House of Dread; Julia Gelezova of PhotoIreland; Louise Fedetov-Clements of Photoworks; writer Marigold Warner; and Jessica Baxter from Tate.

The panel also included photographer and Nikon Ambassador Carolyn Mendelsohn; Amara Eno of the Financial Times; artist Kennedi Carter; and curator Kimberley Moulton of Tate Modern. Together, their diverse backgrounds ensured a selection process attentive not only to aesthetics but also to cultural relevance, narrative depth, and conceptual innovation.

A Platform That Continues to Shift the Lens

Since its inception, Female in Focus has positioned itself as more than an award — it is a platform for recognition, exposure, and long-term opportunity. By foregrounding artists whose perspectives expand the visual conversation, the initiative reinforces the idea that the future of photography depends on who gets seen and who gets heard.

The 2025 edition confirms that the most compelling images today often emerge from spaces of transition. Whether addressing identity, environment, or social change, the selected photographers remind us that the most revealing stories are frequently found not in certainty, but in the fragile, electric moment just before transformation.

Winners-Series
New Scramble: Giya Makondo-Wills
Giya Makondo-Wills’ New Scramble examines a different kind of turning point: the rapid expansion of data centres across South Africa and what the artist describes as a modern “scramble” for Africa. Predominantly set in Johannesburg, with work extending into the Limpopo and Cape provinces, the project considers how patterns of extraction historically tied to land and minerals may now be replicated through data infrastructure.

Layering evocative imagery with personal letters to her grandmother, Makondo-Wills delves into the concepts of ownership, memory and communication in the digital age. Data centres are vast facilities housing servers that power cloud services, streaming and AI and they demand immense energy and water resources, raising questions about sustainability and equity. Through portraits, landscapes and metaphorical imagery, New Scramble refl ects on how stories travel, from oral traditions to fi bre-optic cables beneath the sea, and what it means to control the channels through which culture and identity are transmitted. “How we communicate is changing - if we don’t own the channels we use to communicate, we don’t own the stories, language, identity, culture.” says the artist “What are the implications of this in 100 or 200 years? Could it erase our history, culture?“

Female in Focus 2026 © Giya Makondo-Wills

The Other Battlefields: Laetitia Vançon
Laetitia Vançon The Other Battlefi elds is a poignant and quietly profound portrait of Ukrainian youth living through war. The project began in June 2022, six months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, when Vançon photographed graduates in Odesa dancing among sandbags erected for protection. The image became a catalyst for a wider exploration of young people “standing between two worlds - the life they imagined, and the life the war has imposed on them.”

Rather than focusing on frontlines, Vançon turns her lens towards daily persistence: maritime students continuing their studies, volunteers crafting bulletproof vests, young people navigating friendship, education and love under the weight of the confl ict. In this threshold between childhood and adulthood, between past and future, revealing the enduring imprint of war on a generation coming of age in challenging circumstances.

Female in Focus 2026 © Laetitia Vançon

Female in Focus 2026 © Jip Schalkx

Female in Focus 2026 © Karen Paz Gonzalez

Female in Focus 2026 © Anna Ziegler

Contributors
About Female in Focus
Female in Focus, an international photography award by British Journal of Photography, founded to spotlight the remarkable work of women and non-binary photographers worldwide and to actively challenge gender inequality in the photography industry.

About British Journal of Photography
British Journal of Photography, the world’s longest running photography title, has been showcasing pioneers of the art form since 1854. Through the lenses of world-class photographers, British Journal of Photography explores rich and timely stories of art, culture, politics and society. British Journal of Photography has also created a programme of internationally renowned photography awards - including Female in Focus, OpenWalls, Portrait of Britain, BJP International Photography Award and Portrait of Humanity - all of which aim to celebrate emerging and established talent. Explore BJP's award-winning photographic journalism online, via 1854.photography, and through the pages of its thematically-led bi-monthly print publication

About Nikon
Nikon is a world-leading provider of imaging products and services. Its innovative optics technology - from consumer to professional cameras, lenses to system accessories - is powered by over 100 years of experience. The brand is globally recognised for setting new standards in design and performance, with Nikon’s revolutionary Z series mirrorless cameras and NIKKOR Z lenses representing a new dimension of optical performance. Nikon is committed to leading imaging culture and enables some of the world’s best visual artists to reach their creative potential through visual storytelling. Its award-winning equipment empowers photographers and videographers to realise their creative vision at the highest level. As a trusted visionary partner, it unites all levels of content creators through its engaged community, unrivalled technical expertise and access to educational resources, via initiatives such as The Nikon School.

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast

By Anastasia Samoylova

Publisher : Aperture and the Norton Museum of Art

2025 | 144 pages

Anastasia Samoylova: Atlantic Coast opens a vast, quietly unsettling portrait of the American East Coast — one in which nostalgia, dislocation and transformation are sewn into the landscape itself. In this new monograph, Samoylova retraces the route pioneered by Berenice Abbott in 1954, journeying from Florida to Maine to revisit the places Abbott once documented, and to observe what has become of them decades later. Her images — in vivid color and stark black and white — reveal the tension between myth and reality, between promises of progress and the traces of decay or displacement.

Where once small towns and coastal communities had a certain stillness, Samoylova finds change carved into facades and roadside signs, into suburban sprawl and shuttered shopfronts. She frames these scenes with a photographer’s patience and a poet’s sensitivity — capturing abandoned diners, empty motels, decaying houses, ghostly intersections. At the same time, there is stubborn life: occasional portraits of people, wildlife, reminders that behind every sign of decline, someone, something endures.

Her book does not simply document physical places. It traces the shifting contours of identity, belonging and memory in a nation where the open road has long symbolized freedom — and where that ideal has become tangled with consumerism, environmental degradation, and socio-economic upheaval. Through Atlantic Coast, Samoylova asks whether the “American Dream” remains intact, or if it has fractured along with the towns her car passes through.

Reading this volume is to experience a slow, attentive journey — as a witness, as a traveller, as someone invited to reconsider what America has become. Her photographs linger, subtly unsettling the viewer’s assumptions about beauty, progress and decline. In its silence and restraint, the book whispers that memory, identity and place are fragile — and that every road carries stories worth listening to.

Lisette Model

By Lisette Model

Publisher : Prestel

2026 | 256 pages

Lisette Model presents a definitive exploration of one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, whose bold vision reshaped the way urban life and society were captured on film. This stunning hardcover features over 200 reproductions, ranging from her early Parisian portraits to the striking images of New York streets that defined her career.

Model’s photographic journey began in Vienna and matured in France, where her keen eye for social observation developed. Early works, including portraits of idle elites in Nice, reveal her sharp sense of critique tempered by empathy. These images, at once confrontational and intimate, established her as a formidable observer of human behavior. After emigrating to the United States, Model brought this incisive approach to New York, producing iconic images such as the Coney Island Bather and the Cafe Metropole series, which juxtapose vitality, vulnerability, and the stark contrasts of city life.

Her lens captured both the glamour and grit of her surroundings: the bustling streets of the Lower East Side, the grandeur of high-society gatherings, and the nuanced everyday gestures that reveal the inner lives of her subjects. Model’s distinctive framing, bold compositions, and unflinching attention to human detail created a visual language that remains influential to this day.

This collection also includes lesser-known works from her travels along the U.S. West Coast and Venezuela, highlighting her continued exploration of character, form, and place. Insights from scholar Walter Moser contextualize her work within the broader trajectory of twentieth-century photography, illuminating her enduring impact as both an artist and a teacher.

Lisette Model is more than a retrospective; it is an immersive journey into a world seen through a lens of unvarnished reality and poetic observation. It celebrates a photographer whose fearless engagement with her subjects, combined with her artistic rigor, forged a path for generations of street and documentary photographers, offering an essential resource for enthusiasts and scholars alike.

All About Lisette Model

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy

By Fred Herzog

Publisher : Hatje Cantz

2026 | 144 pages

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy opens a fresh chapter on the streets of Vancouver and beyond, offering the public previously unseen images from the archives of a man whose eye for color and life defied the conventions of his time. Herzog’s work in the 1950s and 60s stands out because he chose Kodachrome — a decision nearly heretical when art photography still equated seriousness with black and white. What emerges through his Leica’s lens is a world awash in warm reds, neon signs, and the soft glow of streetlights — a world that feels alive, tactile, and tender.

After emigrating from Germany to Vancouver in 1953 and working by day as a medical photographer, Herzog spent his evenings and weekends roaming the city streets. He captured storefronts, everyday people going about their lives, second-hand shops, Chinatown alleys, decaying cars, neon reflections — details often overlooked, but rich with character. He treated photography not as artifice but as observation, documenting modern urban life with precision and empathy. His photographs turned ordinary city scenes into a tribute to human presence and urban texture.

The volume collects these rediscovered gems alongside his best-known photos, offering a more complete portrait of a photographer who stubbornly trusted color when many of his peers turned away. The images span Vancouver and also trace Herzog’s travels to the U.S., the Caribbean, Mexico and Central America, showing a restless spirit and a worldwide curiosity. Each frame is infused with intimacy, subtle humor, and a respect for the quotidian — light on one face, a reflection in a shop window, the curve of a car hood shimmering in rain.

Fred Herzog: A Color Legacy is not just a homage to a photographer but a statement about memory, time, and beauty in the urban fabric. It reminds us how much of a city’s soul lives in small moments — a street sign, a storefront, a quiet onlooker — and how color, long seen as frivolous in serious photography, can reveal more truth than monochrome ever could.

All About Fred Herzog

Critical Photojournalism: Contemporary Ethics and Practices

By Tara Pixley, Judy Walgren

Publisher : ‎ Routledge

2025 | 226 pages

An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.

Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.

This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.

British Journal of Photography and Nikon announce the winners of Female in Focus 2025

Celebrating Visionaries on the Edge of Change

Discover all the winners

Selected Books