The National Portrait Gallery in London has been running a prestigious and fiercely competitive photographic portrait contest every year since 2003. Open to professional and amateur photographers from anywhere, the contest this year elicited close to 4,200 images from 1,793 photographers. Of these, a mere 60 photographs were chosen by a four-person jury for exhibition at the NPG, with the winner, named last week, receiving $32,000. In 2011, British photographers Carole Evans and James O Jenkins decided to showcase the best work rejected by the jury. Called Portrait Salon, this usually has entailed projecting slides of the images in places like bars. However, this fall, for the first time, “the best of the rest” – 70 portraits from nearly 1,200 submissions -- is being toured for exhibition in six U.K. galleries, including venues in London, Edinburgh and Birmingham. The tour is scheduled to run into summer 2015. Visit portraitsalon.co.uk. for more information.
Photo by Dougie Wallace
Photo by CY Frankel
Photo by Francesca Jones
Photo by Jenny Lewis
Photo by Julia Fullerton-Batten
Photo by Marcin Jozefiak
Photo by Leonora Saunders
Photo by Sarah Lee
Photo by Ryan Edy
Photo by Sophia Green