OD Photo Prize 2024 | Winner Announced

We are excited to reveal the incredible talent uncovered by OD Photo Prize 2024. This year’s edition saw well over 1,200 projects submitted from around the world, showcasing a diverse range of styles and approaches. The standard was extremely high and, as always, posed a very difficult challenge for our panel of industry professionals to vote for and determine their 2024 Winner. We really hope you enjoy exploring the work from these outstanding emerging pioneers of the photographic medium.

We will be sharing projects from this year’s Longlisted & Shortlisted artists on our Discovery account [@odtakeovers] over the coming weeks and months. Culminating in the opening of a group show featuring affordable prints from the Winning artists towards the end of the year. We hope you can join us to celebrate these talented artists.

We would like to thank this year’s panel & our partners for their time and expertise…

Maria Lax | Director & OD Artist

Rica Cerbarano | Freelance Writer & Curator

Professor Steven MacLeod | Artist, Creative Director at Metro Imaging

Aron Mörel | Publisher, Mörel Books

Karen McQuaid | Senior Curator, The Photographers’ Gallery

Katy Barron | Director, Photo Oxford

Olivia & Valmont | Directors, InCadaques Photo Festival

Tom Page | Founder & Director, Open Doors Gallery

Grand Prize Winner

Sophie Gabrielle
Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat

Artist Statement | Worry For The Fruit The Birds Won’t Eat is an exploration of my own experience with cancer through optics, chemical interactions and an investigative process to photograph something invisible to the naked eye. This project started as a coping mechanism to address the impact it has had upon myself when all males in my family were diagnosed with stage 4 cancer over two years in 2018. They are a sense of the unsettled, fragile, daunting and overwhelming.

Medicinal botanicals sit alongside archival images found in medical research catalogues, creating a space in which the past and present co-exist. The images are left under plates of glass to catch my skin particles and then rephotographed in manifold – entwining myself and creating an abstract self-portrait. These small cells impact the image in such a way that they are transformed into something new, a growth from the product of its surroundings. — Sophie Gabrielle, 2023

Sophie Gabrielle [b. 1993, Australia] is a contemporary photographer living and working on the lands of the Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri people. Their work uses biomaterials, photographic archives and the human body to investigate the connection between photography, history, memory and psychology.

_{Instagram | Website}

Runner Up

Wysocka / Pogo
It Will Keep Growing and Falling Apart

Artist Statement | “It Will Keep Growing and Falling Apart” is a series of prints on canvas inspired by the life of Ann Hodges from Sylacauga, Alabama. At 2:46 PM on November 30, 1954, while Hodges was napping on her couch, a nine-pound meteorite crashed through the ceiling of her home, struck her radio, ricocheted, and hit her in the stomach. This 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite left a severe bruise in the only well-documented case of a person being struck by a rock from space. A fragment of this meteorite, initially deemed worthless, was recently sold at Christie’s auction, fetching a price higher per gram than gold.” — Wysocka / Pogo, 2023

Magdalena Wysocka and Claudio Pogo are an artist duo working in the fields of photography, photobooks, research and archives. Magdalena Wysocka, born in 1987 in Jaworzno, Poland, earned her MA in Printmaking with Honours from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in 2012. Claudio Pogo, born in 1978 in Freiburg, Germany, pursued studies in Fine Arts and Photography in Bremen and Cinematography in Berlin.

_{Instagram | Website}

Runner Up

Emilia Martin
I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears

Artist Statement | “Meteorites, boulders, rocks, stones… A child-like obsession that began innocently, fuelled with curiosity: What stories does a rock whisper?

For over two years I have been collecting rock stories. Many of them belong to folk people, such as my ancestors: collectively woven myths that gave ground to caring rituals of relating to space, the land, to one another. Over time these stories fluctuate, gently passed for generations. The longer I give in to my obsession, the more I begin to believe that a rock is not mute at all, but perhaps, the most excellent storyteller of them all.

I saw a tree bearing stones in the place of apples and pears is an exploration of a rock as a carrier of stories, a migratory body, a silent, mysterious visitor, filled with projections, dreams and fears. It is an investigation of the myths, stories and rituals and an act of reclaiming them back.” — Emilia Martin, 2024

Emilia Martin [b. 1991, Poland] is a photographic artist currently based in the Netherlands. Passionate about storytelling and myths, her practise primarily consists of the photographic medium but also sound and writing.

_{Instagram | Website}

2024 Judges Picks

Each year our panel is able to choose just one artist each, outside of voting for the Grand Prize Winner and two Runners-Up, whose project really stood out to them and deserves a special mention. This year’s Picks are listed below and will be exhibited online & at our pop-up in London towards the end of the year in December.

Gregory Eddi Jones
49/23

“Gregory Eddi Jones’ work is capable of addressing an ultra-contemporary issue, the progression of AI, without falling into cliché—both in terms of aesthetics and content. He encourages us to look at it as connected to the evolution of the medium, building a bridge between past and present with clarity and consistency.”
— Rica Cerbarano

Selected by Rica Cerbarano
Freelance Curator & Writer

_{Follow | Website}

Moník Molinet
“Borrowed grandparents”

“A self-portrait photography project in which I recreate family scenes in the domestic space to create a non-existent memory for me: the relationship with my grandmothers and grandfathers. Some of the scenes were conceived from the experiences of my friends and others, from the projection of a personal desire, thus investigating the limits between life and representation, between the natural and the performative.”
— Moník Molinet

Selected by Maria Lax
Freelance Director & OD Artist

_{Follow | Website}

Kristoffer Per Anders Axén
Placebo

“We are thrilled to have been part of the OD Photo Prize Jury this year and to have discovered amazing projects. This year we have selected the wonderful Swedish artist Kristoffer Axén for our InCadaques Award. As a result we will be showcasing his series ‘Placebo’ from 3 — 13 October at the InCadaqués Photo Festival 2024.”
— Olivia & Valmont

Selected by Olivia & Valmont
Directors of InCadaques Photo Festival

_{Follow | Website}

Abhishek Khedekar
Tamasha

“Dance, performance, social rites and hierarchies intertwine in this fascinating and confident docu-fiction project.”
— Karen McQuaid

Abhishek Khedekar uses archival material as well as documentary photography – inviting collaboration from his subjects and using collage techniques – to visualise this often discriminated group through experimental and surreal visual narratives, citing the traditions of the Tamasha in the realities of modern India.

Selected by Karen McQuaid
Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery
LCC Lecturer

_{Follow | Website}

Yurian Quintanas Nobel
The Ignorant Gardener

“I selected Yurian Quintanas Nobel as these constructed images have a surreal quality that is original, challenging and visually pleasing. They work as still lives but also question humans’ relationship to the natural world and our place within it. The images reference historic botanical photography but are also clearly contemporary in that they use a mixture of digital and real constructions, which produces a complex and strange result which has wit and energy.”
— Katy Barron

Selected by Katy Barron
Photo Oxford, Director

_{Follow | Website}

Elizabeth Blackie
Outlines

Depicting fragments of dreams and nightmares, contemplating the known and unknown, rearranging visual perceptions of what is real. Outlines introduces a visual inquiry into how things can appear familiar but uncanny when one starts to question identity and place.

Selected by Professor Steven MacLeod
Creative Director, Metro Imaging
Artist

_{Follow | Website}

Shawn Bush
Now/When

“Shawn Bush’s project is a disorientating combination of various photographic series that reflect the confusion and manipulation of corporate, political and media spin we’re all too aware of in the post truth era.
The various strata of the project create a challenging narrative through a maelstrom of images.The use of multi exposures results in a complex and disorientating surface, a palimpsest where industry-generated myths and variable facts are intertwined.
At its core, the project suggests that something is happening, but it’s difficult to pin down precisely what that is.”
— Aron Mörel

Selected by Aron Mörel
Publisher, Mörel Books

_{Follow | Website}

J.A. Young
Of Fire, Far Shining

“This project ticked lot of boxes for me. I love the research element. The mix of original and found images. The sense of foreboding across the series and the tension this creates across the series… The images seem to be almost prophetic. The most brutal and destructive traits of humanity play out in each frame as if they were stills captured from an Adam Curtis documentary. We can only hope this isn’t a glimpse into our future.

Each year I try and select work that grabs my attention but also surprises me. J.A Young’s work is also interesting to me as they have had no formal training in photography and I think this is evident in the best possible ways. Their work seems fresh and instinctual and as they only started taking photography seriously last year, I’m very excited about how their practice develops in the years ahead. I’ll be pre-ordering their book for sure.”
— Tom Page

Selected by Tom Page
Founder & Director, Open Doors Gallery

_{Follow | Website}

2024 Shortlisted Artists

We are delighted to reveal the full list of artists that make up this year’s Shortlist including the artists named above. All of these photographic artists caught the attention of our panel with their powerful imagery and their unique approaches to storytelling. Each of these artists are invited to participate in our online exhibition that opens in November and the exhibition in London. Priced affordably, this annual exhibition has become the perfect opportunity to collect work by the best emerging artists.

One more name will be added to this list as part of the public vote hosted on our Discovery account in the coming weeks. As well as sharing more info on each of these projects in the coming weeks.

2024 Longlisted Artists

Congratulations to everyone who submitted work to OD Photo Prize this year. The standard was extremely high.

Sign up to our Newsletter for updates on future exhibitions as well as news from our roster of artists.