Since its inauguration in 2007, the National Photographic Portrait Prize, in its 19 iterations, has presented a lively and polemical survey that highlights curatorial thinking on photographic portraiture.

The exhibitions have always been topical, popular with gallery visitors and highly contested in professional circles. A selection of earlier prize winners is presented in conjunction with the present exhibition.

A barometer for the standing of an art prize exhibition is its uptake with artists. This one is among the most highly regarded in Australia, with over 1000 entries from which the 30 finalists were selected. The Archibald Portrait Prize in 2026 attracted a total of 1034 entries from which the 59 finalists were selected.

In short, this year, it was twice as difficult to be selected as a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize than as a finalist in the Archibald, even though the Archibald boasts a winner’s purse of $100,000 compared with the Portrait Gallery’s prize of $30,000 in cash plus another $20,000 in photographic kit.

Tiarni Majid-Loban, Blak & bare, 2025, type C photograph (frame: 80.9cm x 58.5cm depth 1.8cm). Photo: NPG.

This year’s 30 finalists present a spectacular display that, in many instances, is challenging and, in places, deeply moving. Among the photographers included, it is generally a roll call of well-known names, plus a few newcomers.

Some of the more outstanding participants this year include Michael Cook, Luke Austin, Camille Perry, Meng-Yu Yan, Saskia Wilson, Laki Sideris, Nathan Beard, Madeline Bishop, Brenda Croft, Elise Derwin, Jo Duck, Ingvar Kenne, Shea Kirk, Mia Mala McDonald, Tajette O’Halloran, Scotty So and Prue Hazelgrove.

Prue Hazelgrove, Coming home, 2026, tintype scan, archival pigment print on cotton (frame: 124.0cm x 101.2cm depth 4.3cm). Photo: NPG.

While it would be foolish to think that 30 photographs could capture the pulse of Australian society in 2026, they do highlight several interesting issues.

The Australia that we encounter in this exhibition is markedly multicultural; it is one where the gay, queer and trans community has a certain prominence; and First Nations people are widely represented and stand tall.

Striking and memorable is Michael Cook’s photograph, Walkabout, a large pigment photographic print, where the artist’s friend/model/muse, Joey Gala, is parading over a dozen dogs that he walks over Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing.

He is barefoot, yet otherwise dressed in Gucci. It is a startling and unforgettable image that questions many aspects of postcolonial society – its assumptions and values and how we respond. As with so many of Cook’s photographs, once seen, they cannot be unseen.

Laki Sideris, Gretel Taylor, The Falling, 2026, pigment photographic print (frame: 87.0cm x 62.3cm depth 4.0cm). Photo: NPG.

Laki Sideris’s photograph, The Falling, shows her regular collaborator, the dancer Gretel Taylor, in Croajingolong National Park, Victoria, where she struggles in her costume against a desolate backdrop. It is a metaphor in which greed, excess and inertia are contrasted with ecological collapse.

Tiarni Majid-Loban’s photograph, Blak & bare, is probably more of a traditional portrait photograph than most at the exhibition. However, it is also an ideologically loaded image, in which the photographer is a Wuthathi woman with connections to the Torres Strait, presenting a stunning image of First Nations pride.

Camille Perry, Sublim – 8, 2026, type C photograph (image: 70cm x 90cm. frame: 73.5cm x 111.3cm depth 5.0cm). Photo: NPG.

Prue Hazelgrove, whose work we had recently seen at the Goulburn Regional Gallery, revives 19th-century photographic processes to produce a moody image, Coming home, that can be interpreted through postcolonial and queer lenses.

Her co-exhibitor at Goulburn, Brenda Croft, presents one of her family-ancestry works, in which a 35 mm slide taken by her mother of Brenda’s father is given scale and the status of a social document.

Camille Perry, who describes herself as a queer lens-based artist, has one of the most seductive works in the show, Sublim-8, while Meng-Yu Yan, a Chinese-Australian queer non-binary artist, has one of the most challenging and confronting pieces in Star I.

Nathan Beard, Mae Khong, 2026, pigment photographic print (frame: 62.9cm x 43.2cm depth 3.8cm). Photo: NPG.

The judges of the 2026 Photographic Portrait Prize, all on the staff of the NPG, awarded the prize to Nathan Beard’s sensitive and intimate photograph of his Thai-born aunt Mae Khong, shown naked after a shower. It is a moving and compassionate image.

The First Time Finalist Award went to Phuong Nguyen Lee’s photograph of his father Le Ngoc Long, while the Art Handler’s Award went to Hussein Addirahmad Mohamud’s photo of Eedo/Aunt Khadija.

Portrait photography deals with identity, but identity itself may be socially constructed and filtered through history, memory and gender.

This is one of those rare portrait exhibitions that goes beyond simply recording identity and tries to provide some understanding of its building blocks.

Next year this prize will be replaced with a new prize whose details are yet to be announced.

National Photographic Portrait Prize 2026 is open at the National Portrait Gallery, King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra. It closes 11 October and is open daily from 9 am to 5 pm.