Laundry Day #3 was shot from the photographer’s window
(Picture: Clémentine Schneidermann)Images of an elderly woman hanging out her washing during lockdown have won the prestigious Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2022.
Two of Clémentine Schneidermann’s portraits from her series Laundry Day documented the daily life of her neighbour in south Wales, while navigating quarantine.
The photographer, who lives between Paris and south Wales, wins £15,000.
The works are part of a series of photographs taken during times of quarantine, self-isolation, and national lockdowns in the UK.
“These images are a response to a quiet time when approaching strangers was very challenging,” Schneidermann said. “They speak about the duality between stagnation and passage of time. My neighbour’s garden became a tiny imaginary stage where from my window I documented small moments of her life.”
Judges praised the simplicity of the project, for “capturing the calm mundanity of domestic tasks”.
They said in a statement on Tuesday that the images “evoked a strong sense of stillness and quiet, yet perhaps also loneliness and isolation, despite the proximity of the photographer”.
They also praised “the unusual perspective” of the portraits, which are “close, but not close enough to see the sitter’s face”, creating “an intriguing play with the conventions of traditional portraiture”.
The £3,000 second prize went to South African visual poet and activist Haneem Christian, for their entries Mother and Daughter, and Rooted. Christian’s entries explore queerness and transness in relation to race and identity, and the importance of chosen family.
Mother and Daughter depicts Cheshire Vineyard and Autumn May, who are both trans feminine artists from Cape Town, while Rooted depicts a figure in a woodland setting, honouring “the journey of returning to the self by seeing yourself through the eyes of a loved one”.
Alexander Komenda took the £2,000 third prize for Zahid’s Son, a portrait that examines themes of identity and the post-Soviet landscape in Kyrgyzstan.
What is the Taylor Wessing prize?
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is an annual photographic portrait prize awarded by the National Portrait Gallery in London.
The prize is an open competition accepting submissions from amateur and professional photographers worldwide.
It was established in 2003 as the Schweppes Photographic Portrait Prize.
This year, the three winners were chosen from 4,462 submissions entered by 1,697 photographers from 62 countries.
A total of 51 portraits from 36 artists have also been selected for display from October 27 until December 18, at Cromwell Place, in South Kensington, as the National Portrait Gallery’s usual building in St Martin’s Place is being redeveloped.
Chaired by Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, this year’s judging panel included Christina Lamb, chief foreign correspondent at the Sunday Times, the photographer Siân Davey, and Shoair Mavlian, director of Photoworks.
Who is Clémentine Schneidermann?
The winner, Schneidermann, is a French photographer, living and working between Paris and south Wales.
With a focus on being a social documentary photographer, she has a particular interest in communities. Her website describes her work as “collaborative and playful”.
She said her Laundry Day series was intended to “document micro-events which deal with the passage of time through the small moments of our daily lives”.
The photographer intended to capture the every day by honing in on one daily chore, noting how “the beauty of photography is to create magic out of the simplest moments”.
