The winners, finalists and honourable mentions of the 2025 awards. Two categories: One Frame, judged on a single portrait, and Photo Essay, judged on a body of work of up to fifteen.
358photographs in this gallery
67photographers
18photo essays recognised
104One Frame honourable mentions
Category
One Frame
Honouring the strength of a single photographic portrait. One winner and two finalists, chosen from every One Frame entry in 2025.
Years after their expulsion from Myanmar, thousands of unregistered Rohingya refugees living in the Kutupalong makeshift camp, Bangladesh, have been forcibly displaced from their homes, in an act of intimidation and abuse by the local authorities. Some international organisations have been treating numerous people for injuries where the majority were women and children victims of rejection, and the situation doesn't seem to be advancing but towards the ultimate despair of these new asian parias.
In my final days of breastfeeding, I photographed myself with my daughter. Abandoning self-led weaning was one of the hardest choices I’ve made as a mother. The anecdotal advice was endless: “Don’t offer, don’t refuse. Try garlic or vinegar on your nipples. Leave home until she forgets.” In the end, it was the bandages on my chest that worked, because she understood the word broken. In that moment, the familiar quietly shifted toward something new and unknown. As my deepest attachment met my desire for release, I turned the camera on myself to acknowledge the vulnerability of being caught between holding on and letting go.
A curated series of up to fifteen portraits that connect as one body of work. The winning essay and the two finalists. Scroll each one frame by frame, or open any frame to see it full size.
Photography has flooded our world with images of ourselves. We are accustomed to seeing and assessing images of people constantly, most of whom are celebrities or strangers we will never meet or know. We instantly affix attributes, often based just on the attractiveness of the other gender.
In the 19th century, photography allowed painting to pull away from detail to focus on an emotional response to reality. With ‘Bypassing the Rational,’ I am knowingly retreating from the details which draw and entice us, and which allow us to judge. Seeing every pore, every scar and sag is not a route to intimacy; it is a pretense.
Instead, the focus only reaches part of the figure. The rest is a blur in a vibrant, limitless sea of color, a confluence of emotions and feelings; this evokes the traces of memory we have for each other. The limited focus demonstrates our inability to ever fully understand each other. This action becomes so pronounced, genders can be difficult to discern; even the basics can’t be taken for granted.
People are inextricably connected to their livestock and beasts of burden.
The peoples of the Ilemi triangle (the Omo valley of Ethiopia, Central and Eastern Equatoria and Northern Kenya) are all pastoralists. Their bond with their livestock is inextricably connected to their environment and their subsistence farming systems have a small ecological footprint. This area is very vulnerable to climate change and the impacts of drought have desiccated their environments. Cattle, sheep and goats are their livelihoods and all their wealth is dependent upon them.
The animals are used in barter for guns, dowry’s for wives, blood for nutrition, milk as part of their daily diet and occasionally they slaughter cattle for meat. The Mundari of Central Equatoria and the Kara of the Omo have many traits and traditions in common. They often practice transhumance, moving their herds in response to rains and fresh grazing.
There is hardly any other country in Europe where a past conflict is still as present in daily life as Northern Ireland. Not only by physical barriers as walls and fences but also through a psychologically divided society. I have been documenting what it means for young people, all of whom were born after the peace agreement was signed, to grow up under this inter-generational tension – in both, Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods.
If I had been born at the top of my street, behind the corrugated-iron border, I would have been British. Incredible to think. My whole idea of myself, the attachments made to a culture, heritage, religion, nationalism and politics are all an accident of birth. I was one street away from being born my ‘enemy’«. Paul McVeigh, Belfast-born novelist.
I have been documenting the daily life of teenagers in British working-class communities for two decades. After the Brexit referendum I focused this work on Belfast where Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists who live in homogeneous neighborhoods that are divided by walls till today. These two communities in Belfast who seem to have irreconcilable differences, are more similar than they’d both like to admit. While they still stick to their own symbols of their identity and tradition, they wear the same clothes, have the same haircuts, listen to the same music, drink the same beer, take the same drugs and often the same worries such as violence, unemployment, social discrimination and therefore, lack of prospects. Old hardliners with links to the paramilitary groups tried to maintain their idea of culture and tradition by putting pressure on the communities. Enemy stereotypes were cultivated instead of being dismantled, ideas of how one should be were given to the children. Especially for teenagers in search of identity, this exerts a lot of pressure.
Javier Arcenillas won the One Frame award with Citizens of despair. The One Frame finalists were Hanna Wolf (Weaning Elowen) and Ahmed El Hanjoul (This is my eye).
Maciek Jasik won the Photo Essay award with Bypassing The Rational. The Photo Essay finalists were Trevor Cole (Pastoral Peoples and Practices) and Toby Binder (Divided Youth).
The two categories
One Frame recognises the strength of a single portrait. Photo Essay recognises a series of up to fifteen portraits that work together as one body of work.
Alongside the winners and finalists, 15 Photo Essay and 104 One Frame entries received honourable mentions: 358 photographs by 67 photographers in total.
Shoot The Frame since 2012
Shoot The Frame has run portrait photography awards since 2012. Every monthly winner and finalist from 2012 to 2025, across Portrait, Landscape and Wildlife, is in The Archive.
Submissions for the 2026 awards open in November 2026.
