Marisol Mendez named winner of the 2026 Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize

The Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize was founded in 2025 by photographer and philanthropist Lisa Saltzman, through the Saltzman Family Foundation, in collaboration with internationally renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz. It honours the legacy of Ralph and Muriel Saltzman, both deeply committed collectors and longstanding patrons of the arts.

The 2026 Prize celebrates the next generation of female visual storytellers, inspired by Annie Leibovitz’s book Women, and is designed to spotlight emerging talent at a pivotal moment in their creative journeys. For this edition, five international nominators from across the photography field have each proposed an exceptional artist, whose work is evaluated by an esteemed jury. A selection of works by the nominated artists will be exhibited at Photo London, Olympia, from 13–17 May 2026.

The 2026 winner is Marisol Mendez, for MADRE, and she will receive $15,000 USD. Second place is awarded to Miranda Barnes, for Social Season, who will receive $5,000 USD.

Marisol Mendez is a photographer and researcher from Cochabamba, Bolivia, whose practice explores the tension between truth and fiction, and the relationship between what a photograph constructs and the (sur)reality it draws from. Through research-driven and self-initiated projects, she challenges traditional modes of representation and builds layered, multifaceted narratives. Rooted in the landscapes and folklore of her culture, her work moves between candid and staged, naturalistic and mythical. Her practice ultimately invites viewers to question the stories images tell and the systems of belief they sustain.

By weaving together Andean folklore and Catholic iconography, her work highlights the complexities of contemporary Bolivian identity and reflects the country’s rich and diverse culture. MADRE also incorporates archival photographs from her family album depicting female relatives, using the archive as a bridge to reconnect with her matriarchal lineage.

Pelusa © Marisol Mendez

Portrait of Tam, a dancer and friend, who approached me to collaborate on images exploring the “less desirable” aspects of the body as a means of reclaiming agency.
While working on MADRE, many of my ideas around gender and its expression began to shift. Tam showed me that gender is not stable but elastic, something we all perform in different ways. Some adhere to a strict choreography, while others choose to improvise, moving between forms.

Bull © Marisol Mendez

MADRE confronts the machismo that runs deep in Bolivian society and the Catholic dogmas that continue to define femininity. The work borrows from Andean mythology and ritual to expose how gender, faith, and colonial history intertwine. One of its references is the Waka Thuqhuri dance, a tradition that mocks Spanish bullfighting and turns it into a parody of conquest. Through costume and gesture, the dance reclaims power by transforming the spectacle of domination into laughter and subversion.
In this photograph, a woman wears the bull’s costume. The animal, an emblem of virility and violence, becomes her mask, her armour. By embodying it, she inverts its meaning, shifting the narrative from submission to defiance. The image, like dance, becomes an act of rebellion.

Marisol Mendez says:

“When I told my mom about the nomination, she recognized Annie Leibovitz’s name as someone who had left a mark on me. I remember being captivated by her images, which led me to embrace fiction and storytelling in my own work, especially when approaching complex subjects. After all, it is often easier to understand love or time through a poem or a song than through a chemistry lesson or the manual of a clock. I am deeply moved by this recognition. The Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize allows me to continue telling my stories, and more importantly, encourages me to do so on my own terms.”

Nominators for the 2026 edition were Emma Bowkett (Director of Photography, FT Weekend Magazine), Zanele Muholi (Visual Activist), Jennifer Pastore (Global Creative Director, Vanity Fair), Ivan Shaw (Visuals Editor, The World of Interiors and Director, Archive Strategy and Engagement), and Leslie Simitch (Executive Vice President, Trunk Archive).

The jury included Deborah Aaronson (Vice President and Group Publisher, Phaidon), Phyllis Posnick (Contributing Editor, Vogue), David Campany (Curator and Creative Director, International Center of Photography, New York), and Azu Nwagbogu (Curator; National Geographic Explorer at Large; Founder and Director of the African Artists’ Foundation; Founder of LagosPhoto Festival; Creator of Art Base Africa).

Lisa Saltzman, Founder and Director of the Saltzman Family Foundation, said: “I established the Saltzman Leibovitz Prize in honour of my parents, Ralph and Muriel Saltzman—passionate art collectors, patrons and philanthropists—who taught me to pay attention: to art, to people, and to the world around us. Annie Leibovitz has spent a lifetime doing exactly that, finding the profound in the intimate and the monumental in the everyday. This prize is my way of carrying those legacies forward by supporting emerging artists as they discover their own ways of seeing. Being a photographer myself, I truly understand the importance of these opportunities.”

Killa © Marisol Mendez

Killa, the Quechua word for moon, evokes Mama Quilla, the Inca moon goddess traditionally seen as a protector of women. Invoking this lineage allows the work to place contemporary struggles within a longer cosmology of care and guardianship.
In recent years Bolivia has registered alarming levels of gender violence, and 2019 marked a period of intensified public outcry around feminicides and impunity. Against this backdrop, MADRE does more than document: it insists on a visual language that resists erasure. Vanessa Galindo’s portraiture in the series channels that growing female revolt, a ripening, stubborn refusal to be silenced, by reworking religious and vernacular iconography into images of dignity and defiance.

The runner-up is Miranda Rae Barnes
Miranda Rae Barnes is a photo-based artist born in Brooklyn, NY. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Humanities and Justice from John Jay College in 2018. Her practice draws from vernacular photography and a fine art tradition of documenting everyday scenes of family and friends, often in moments of communion and celebration. She has photographed across the United States and internationally, both on commission and through personal artistic explorations. She lives and works between Brooklyn, New York, and Austin, Texas.

Her project offers a glimpse into the unique tradition of African American cotillion culture, focusing on Black debutante balls. Through color photography, she highlights generational Black excellence and forms of cultural expression. While visually refined and elegant, the images also serve as a reminder that within living memory, being a well-dressed, articulate Black person could be perceived as inappropriate—or even dangerous.

Social Season © Miranda Rae Barnes

Martin Parr: The Last Resort: 40 Years On

By Martin Parr

Publisher : Dewi Lewis Publishing & Martin Parr Foundation

2026 | 60 pages

"The pictures from The Last Resort still hold up brilliantly. If I ever reach the Pearly Gates, those are the ones I’d probably pull out first!" – Martin Parr

Published in collaboration with the Martin Parr Foundation, this special edition accompanies a tribute exhibition at the Foundation’s Bristol gallery, honouring Martin Parr following his passing in December. Shot in and around the English seaside town of New Brighton between 1983 and 1985, The Last Resort remains a landmark in British colour documentary photography, establishing Parr as one of the nation’s most influential photographers.

This volume presents a carefully curated selection of images from the iconic series, alongside extensive archival material, including contact sheets, photographs, and ephemera drawn from Martin’s personal collection. Isaac Blease, Archivist at the Foundation, provides insight into the project’s origins, exploring the artistic and cultural influences that prompted Parr’s shift from black-and-white to colour photography, as well as the series’ initial exhibitions in Liverpool and at London’s Serpentine Gallery.

Peter Brawne, designer of the original 1986 book, reflects on the creative process behind the design and his collaboration with Martin, while Susie Parr, Martin’s wife, contributes a personal account of New Brighton and the first public presentation of the work at Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery in 1985.

Richly illustrated and thoughtfully contextualized, this book offers both longtime admirers and new readers a unique glimpse into the development of Martin Parr’s iconic vision and the vibrant world of British seaside life that inspired it.

All About Martin Parr

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time

By Nathalie Rubens

Publisher : Kehrer Verlag

2026 | 112 pages

Nathalie Rubens: Seasons of Time marks a thoughtful and intimate debut, tracing the subtle thresholds that define a woman’s life. In this carefully composed photobook, Nathalie Rubens reflects on two parallel passages: her daughter Ruby’s emergence into young adulthood and her own transition into post-menopausal life. Through this mirrored gaze, the work becomes a meditation on continuity and change, revealing how beginnings and endings often unfold side by side.

Rubens turns the camera inward and outward with equal tenderness. Portraits of Ruby capture the fragile confidence and uncertainty of youth—moments poised between dependence and independence. In contrast, self-portraits confront the physical and emotional transformations of midlife with quiet candor. The images resist sentimentality; instead, they dwell in nuance, acknowledging vulnerability while affirming resilience. The body, in its evolving forms, becomes both subject and witness to time’s passage.

Domestic interiors, shared gestures, and fleeting glances anchor the book in lived experience. Light filters through windows, falls across skin, and settles on everyday objects, creating a rhythm that echoes the seasons invoked in the title. Rubens approaches aging not as decline, but as a shifting landscape—one marked by introspection, memory, and renewed self-awareness. The dialogue between mother and daughter unfolds without hierarchy, suggesting that each stage of life carries its own clarity and its own mystery.

Deeply personal yet widely relatable, Seasons of Time speaks to the universality of transition. It honors the complexity of female identity as something neither fixed nor singular, but constantly in motion. Through measured composition and emotional honesty, Rubens crafts a visual reflection on growth, separation, and connection. The result is a quiet affirmation that time, though relentless, can also be a source of understanding and grace, binding generations even as it gently transforms them.

Jon McCormack: Patterns: Art of the Natural World

By Jon McCormack

Publisher : Damiani

2026 | 168 pages

The structural organization of the biosphere is the primary subject of Patterns: Art of the Natural World, a comprehensive visual catalog by Australian photographer and conservationist Jon McCormack. The work operates on the premise that life and geology are governed by a shared geometry, manifested in the recurring arrangements found within botanical specimens, animal migration routes, and topographical transformations. McCormack utilizes high-resolution digital sensors to isolate these rhythms, presenting a data-rich look at the physical world that spans from the macro-scale of elephant trails in the Kenyan savanna to the micro-textures of fossilized feathers. This survey functions as an empirical record of the planet’s innate design, emphasizing the mathematical consistency of natural forms across disparate ecosystems.

The geographical scope of the project encompasses a wide range of extreme environments, including the volcanic coastlines of Iceland and the sub-zero fjords of Antarctica. McCormack documents the silent, systemic logic of the earth, such as the intricate symmetry found within the ice caves of Svalbard and the rhythmic branching of tree rings. A significant portion of the archive focuses on the photographer’s local environment in California, where the interplay of desert erosion and coastal tides provides a laboratory for studying the evolution of landforms. By removing the distraction of color in certain instances or utilizing flat lighting, the imagery highlights the "technofossils" of the natural world—the enduring structures that define the history of a landscape and its inhabitants.

Supplementing the visual evidence are a series of short essays penned by a multidisciplinary group of scientists and explorers. These texts provide a theoretical framework for the photographs, explaining the biological and physical forces that generate specific patterns, such as the fractals in river deltas or the hexagonal tiling of basalt columns. This collaboration ensures that the book remains a rigorous journalistic inquiry into the interconnectedness of life rather than a purely aesthetic exercise. As ecosystems face unprecedented pressure from climate instability, Patterns stands as a definitive document of the planet’s foundational architecture, recording the complex symmetries that underpin global biodiversity before they are irrevocably altered by human intervention.

Albert Watson: Kaos

By Albert Watson

Publisher : Taschen

2026 | 408 pages

Albert Watson: Kaos is a masterful survey of one of photography’s most influential voices, spanning five decades of work that oscillates between intimacy and spectacle. Watson’s photographs are at once meticulously composed and viscerally immediate, capturing both the iconic and the unexpected with equal authority.

KAOS charts Watson’s journey from his breakthrough Alfred Hitchcock portrait in 1973 to the present, revealing the astonishing range of his vision. Across its pages, readers encounter a kaleidoscope of subjects: celebrities in revealing vulnerability, strangers in fleeting urban moments, wildlife in arresting stillness, and landscapes that shimmer with elemental power. Each frame is a study in light, shadow, and narrative tension, embodying Watson’s extraordinary ability to render the familiar as extraordinary.

The book moves fluidly between worlds. Supermodels and pop icons—David Bowie, Kate Moss, Jay Z, Jennifer Lopez, Mick Jagger—sit alongside anonymous figures in neon-lit cities and remote Scottish landscapes, their presence amplified by Watson’s uncanny sense of timing and composition. From sensuous nudes to stark urban street photography, his work explores surface beauty while hinting at the emotional and psychological depth beneath. Watson’s camera captures not only what is seen, but the subtle textures of human experience: desire, humor, solitude, and magnetism.

Accompanied by an essay from Philippe Garner and enriched with Watson’s own reflections, as well as previously unpublished Polaroids from his personal archive, KAOS is both an authoritative career retrospective and a deeply personal document. The photographs pulse with cinematic allure, formal precision, and the irrepressible vitality of a life spent observing the world in its most dynamic and intimate moments.

Presented in a sumptuous hardcover, with optional signed Art Editions including exclusive prints, Albert Watson: Kaos is a definitive celebration of an artist whose work continues to inspire photographers, collectors, and enthusiasts around the globe, capturing a universe simultaneously chaotic, poetic, and utterly compelling.

Marisol Mendez named winner of the 2026 Saltzman-Leibovitz Photography Prize

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