Winners Announced: AAP Magazine 57 Portrait Awards

''It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are.'' Paul Caponigro

Portrait photography is far more than a mere physical record of a face. It is a profound artistic genre operating at the crossroads of technical mastery and raw human sensibility. While early portraiture in 1839 mimicked the stiff aesthetics of classical paintings for the upper class, modern portrait photography has evolved into a dynamic celebration of the subject. A truly great portrait captures a privileged, fleeting moment where alchemy happens, allowing the photographer to peer beneath the surface and capture the very personality of the subject.

In this newest edition of AAP Magazine, the selected winners beautifully showcase innovative, contemporary approaches to portraiture alongside striking, timeless traditional work. From intimate studio sessions to sensitive documentary approaches that capture fleeting raw emotions, these images go beyond the ordinary to express the full scope of photographic creativity. A powerful portrait can elicit a vast spectrum of responses—it can describe, reveal, embellish, question, or deeply unsettle.

While a portrait may have a thousand faces, we could only display a select few. We are absolutely delighted to reveal the 25 talented photographers from 12 different countries and four continents who won AAP Magazine #57: Portrait. Each artist shares a deeply personal narrative, reflecting a unique aesthetic and a distinct approach to the human form.

Discover the extraordinary global galleries and meet the visionaries shaping the future of portrait photography today.

The Winner is Kevin Smith (United States) with the series 'Characters, New York'

Kevin Smith is a New York-based photographer whose work centers on strangers in public spaces. After a period of personal change, his photography sharpened into a sustained study of faces, gestures, and fleeting encounters on the street. His ongoing series Characters, New York looks at the city through its people: guarded, expressive, theatrical, private, and alive. Rather than explain his subjects, Smith photographs the brief charge of their presence as it appears and disappears in the city’s flow.
www.djchroma.com
@djchroma


The Second Place Winner is Ian McFarlane (United States) with the series 'Of The South'

Quarry Soldier was taken during a July 4th celebration 2025 at a private swimming quarry in rural Georgia.
I started talking with the young man and he allowed me to photograph him and his friends. We talked about his four years he served as a Marine in the US military. Spending a good amount of his time in Afghanistan, he was now out of the service and trying to adjust and decide what to do with his life.
This photo sparked the portrait / documentary series that is still in progress, “Of The South.” My attempt at traveling throughout the south capturing moments and portraits of people.
www.ianmcfarlanephoto.format.com
@ianmcfarlanephoto


The Third Place Winner is Emily Neville Fisher (United States) with the series 'Natural Tendencies'

My ongoing body of work Natural Tendencies studies the delicate and symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world, through my lens as mother, wife and environmentalist. I am acutely aware of the loss of nature and the ephemerality of childhood. As modern childhood becomes increasingly indoors and on screens, my work seeks to preserve and honor these moments of connection between children and nature, and embrace the wildness that makes us all human.
emilynevillefisher.com
@emilyfisherphoto
All About Emily Neville Fisher


MERIT AWARD GALLERY
Manuel Besse (France)

Compiled over several years, this collection of portraits is rooted in a commitment to anthropological documentation. The use of color in these works—shot in India, Sudan, and Benin—stems from a requirement for fidelity to the terrain. While black and white photography favors formal abstraction, color is utilized here as a marker of context and identity.
These images do not seek aesthetic artifice; rather, they document the reality of the populations encountered in public spaces. The chromatic palette—from the mineral ochres of Sudan to ritual pigments in India and the vibrant tones of daily life in Benin—serves as both informative data and an aesthetic component. Each portrait constitutes a visual archive addressing the human condition and the resilience of lifestyles in the face of contemporary change. This factual approach aims to accurately account for the presence and dignity of the subjects within their immediate environment.
www.manuelbesse.com
@manuelbesseofficial
All About Manuel Besse


Beidi Tu (China)

What are we looking at when we look in a mirror? The project explores the quiet tension between identity and reflection.Through a double composition, the subject appears as two versions of the same self—one facing outward, one turned inward. It reflects a subtle duality: control and vulnerability, presence and absence, self and mirror.
@beidi.tu7


Martina Holmberg (Sweden)

CATRIN - When Catrin was 19 years old, she was involved in a devastating fire accident that nearly claimed her life. Her recovery was long and difficult, both physically and emotionally. Today, she lectures about her experiences, the journey toward self-acceptance, and what it means to live with the lasting impact of severe burns.
www.martinaholmberg.com
@ina_h


Svetlin Yosifov (Bulgaria)

The Karo tribe, living in the area southeast of the River Omo in Ethiopia, are a group of just over 1,000 tribespeople. They survive on agriculture and natural annual flooding of the Omo river. From a young age, boys are tasked with tending to the family's livestock, primarily goats and sheep. When the crops of sorghum and maize are maturing, boys spend hours perched on wooden platforms, using slingshots and loud shouts to scare away hungry birds and baboons.
1x.com/picsvet
@svetlin_yosifov
All About Svetlin Yosifov


Abdelrahman Alkahlout (Palestine)

In Gaza, an older sister holds a younger child close amid displacement and harsh living conditions caused by the ongoing war. Their quiet gaze reflects a fragile yet powerful bond of protection and care in a world shaped by uncertainty and loss. In a place where childhood has been profoundly affected by conflict, their embrace becomes a symbol of resilience, love, and the human need for comfort in the face of hardship.
@abd.pix96


Chris Panas (Poland)

Photo of my Grandmother, 92 years old. World War II veteran and survivor. Absolutely incredible person, gentle warm and but tough and hard working. The war stories she shared were something I will never forget.
www.chrispanas.com
@chris.panas


Kristyn Taylor (New Zealand/Australia)

It always amazes me how human beings connect; we are a social species, and we don’t always need language to express ourselves. I love connecting with people and I find such a lot of joy and meaning in the moments I share with the people I have met in East Africa.
www.kristyntaylorphotography.com
@kristyn_taylor
All About Kristyn Taylor


Andi Xie (China)

Developed in an artist village in my hometown of Hefei, China, this series stages quiet encounters between local farmers, artists, animals, and architectural thresholds. Through cinematic portraiture, the work reflects on lives coexisting within a landscape shaped by wider systems of development, cultural production, and rural transformation.
andixie.com
@_andidi/


Markus Kirchhofer (Germany)

The Inner Green Belt, a park in Cologne/Germany, stretches seven kilometers in a semicircle through the city center. As a continuous green strip, it forms a recreational landscape that reflects the city's social and cultural diversity. Here, people from diverse backgrounds encounter each other daily while relaxing, playing sports, or socializing. This long-term portrait series, photographed on 120mm film, captures the Green Belt as a vibrant mirror of urban society.
www.markuskirchhofer.com
@strassenknipser


Stephen Wallace (United States)

I was photographing a village in central China. A man was following us. My guide starting talking to him. He was a famous architect in China. He took us to his house and showed models of the bridges and buildings he designed.
stephenwallace.zenfolio.com


Ying Yin (Chinese)

The river flows endlessly, carrying with it the passage of time. People living by the river come and go in different ways. Some gather for a moment, while others quietly disappear. Yet amid these movements, life itself remains strangely unchanged.
ying-yin.com
@yin.ying__


Marc Gaillot (France)

“Entre Peau Et Masque” explores the fragile distance between intimacy and performance. Through a series of black-and-white portraits, the body becomes a space of tension where vulnerability coexists with constructed identities. Alternating between closeness and distance, the images question what remains visible — or hidden — behind gestures, objects, and appearances.
@ymark_blak_


Oleg Buyanov (Russia)

This series reconsiders portraiture through controlled visibility. It emerged from a spontaneous portrait session with an LGBTQ+ individual, assembled in the moment through intuition, improvised props, and a shared creative impulse between an emerging model and a photographer. Traditionally, a portrait is expected to reveal a face, to affirm presence through recognition. Yet for many LGBTQ+ individuals, even within contemporary democratic societies, visibility remains conditional. The ability to be seen is negotiated, edited, or withheld. The photographs in this series could not exist publicly in their original forms. Despite their aesthetic or emotional value, the subject chose to obscure their identity before allowing the images to be shared. This act of concealment is not merely protective; it is expressive. The face, historically the site of legibility, becomes inaccessible. It forms a new visual language of portraiture — one where identity is articulated through absence, interruption, and refusal. In this sense, the series does not depict a hidden individual, but rather the conditions under which a LGBTQ+ portrait can exist today. The subject emerges not through visibility, but through the tension between exposure and erasure, throudh the continuous negotiation between the desire to be seen and the necessity to remain unseen.
@ole.buyanov


Anne Berry (United States)

Just a girl and her rat. Their gazes do not meet but there is a clear, unspoken connection. In this moment of stillness, childhood reveals itself as a place not of clarity, but of wonder, strangeness, and unspoken worlds. The girl’s sailor blouse suggests a storybook innocence, but the eyes of the child and the rat feel more complicated and mysterious. This portrait is part of Ode to Enchantment, a collection of dreamlike images that capture a world that is both a playground and a labyrinth.
www.anneberrystudio.com
@a_n_n_e_b_e_r_r_y
All About Anne Berry


Roberta Vagliani (Italy)

Elio, born in 1922, went through an era far from technology and social media, a time when the connection between people was born from concrete experiences and direct exchanges. Growing up without a cell phone, he knew the difficulties of the Second World War, but he also experienced the beauty of a life lived through manual work and authentic relationships. His stories, made of pain and hope, teach us that the true connection does not reside in the screens, but in the glances that cross and in the words that touch the heart. His experiences tell the value of a life that has withstood not only the war, but also the silence of modern technologies, keeping alive the joy of a genuine and deep connection.
@dreamlovetravels
All About Roberta Vagliani


Sankar Sridhar (India)

In the thin, high-altitude air of Ladakh, army veteran Kesari Singh lived a life of quiet transition. Having stayed in the mountains long after his retirement, he occupied a single room where the smoke of his morning rituals mingled with the memory of a brother lost in action—whose faded portrait keeps watch from the wall. Before his passing in 2024, the frail veteran who stood against enemies on the frozen borderlands to protect us, stood up for those even more helpless, spending his days in prayer and tending to orphaned and injured animals. While this image isn't part of a traditional project or series, it represents the true catharsis and beautiful burden of documentary photography. On our travels, we meet thousands of people who touch us. Some remain mere subjects; others become friends. Kesari, and others like him who belong to a different time, world, and life, leave a permanent impression. He began as a subject but became a friend—someone I would return to visit not to shoot, but simply to spend time with. This image stands alone because Kesari himself was entirely singular.
sankarsridhar.com
@sankar.sridhar


Susanne Middelberg (Germany)

Brechje is my daughter. She continues to move and inspire me time and again. She has so many sides to her personality. She is vulnerable, yet at the same time very self-aware. She is currently pursuing her master’s degree in neuropsychology. I find her very social, wise, and mature for her age. And yet she can also be very anxious and insecure.
www.susannemiddelberg.nl
@susanne_middelberg
All About Susanne Middelberg


Lennard Grohn (Germany)

In Relation is an ongoing photographic project exploring intimacy, proximity and transformation within a long-term relationship. The work follows small shifts in nearness and distance over time, shaped by time, trust and restraint. The photograph Decision was made after the artist’s partner decided to cut and donate her hair for children who had lost theirs during cancer treatment.
lennardgrohn.com
@lennardgrohn


Steff Gruber (Switzerland)

In India’s southernmost state of Tamil Nadu, the settlement of Poonjeri is home to around 40 Narikuravar families. They belong to a semi-nomadic community of around 30,000 people that are spead across the state. Historically, their main source of livelihood was hunting. The Narikuravar people have experienced discrimination ever since ancient times and were long considered “untouchables”. In 2023, the Indian central government finally granted the Narikuravar people “scheduled tribe” status. But the Narikuravar people continue to be marginalized to this day. Access to healthcare, education and formal employment is still limited. The Narikuravar, who are portrayed here, live today in small stone houses built for them by various organizations after a tsunami destroyed the community’s settlement a couple of miles away in 2004.
www.steffgruber.com
@steffgruber
All About Steff Gruber


Somdutt Prasad (United Kingdom/India)

Photographed at a transit camp for pilgrims travelling to the Gangasagar Mela in eastern India, this portrait focuses on a Hindu sadhu awaiting the next stage of his journey. His striking profile, towering matted hair, and weathered expression immediately drew my attention. Rather than documenting a specific moment of ritual, the image explores the presence of a man whose face seems to carry the accumulated traces of age, experience, sacrifice, and spiritual discipline. Against a dark background, the portrait becomes a study of character, inviting viewers to imagine the stories and insights that lie behind his gaze.
sight2020.org
www.facebook.com/somduttprasad


Larry K. Sinder (United States)

While visiting a nomadic family in Tibet, I met this young girl holding a newborn lamb outside her family's tent. Drawn to her quiet strength and direct gaze, I made this portrait as a reflection of the deep bond between Tibetan pastoral communities and their animals. The photograph speaks to resilience, tradition, and a way of life that has endured for generations on the high plateau.
larryksnider.com
www.facebook.com/larryksnider


Jeff Schewe (United States)

In loving memory of Jeff Schewe, who left us just days before learning that he was among the winners of this edition of Portrait. His work remains a lasting part of this celebration.
schewephoto.com
All About Jeff Schewe