A Portrait That Refuses Pity, and Demands Attention
Shoot The Frame 2025 Annual Awards (One Frame Winner) — A narrative interview with Javier Arcenillas on documentary ethics, urgency, and the responsibility to shine a light on people who need it.
Javier Arcenillas does not romanticise documentary photography. He does not talk about perfect conditions or clever frames. He talks about the subject, the message, and the urgency of seeing. Selected as the One Frame Winner in the Shoot The Frame 2025 Annual Awards, his winning photograph is a portrait of a refugee mother in Kutupalong camp, made as part of a project on Rohingya refugees.
“It is a portrait of a refugee mother,” he says, “in the Kutupalong camp… the largest in the world.” His hope for the viewer is simple and specific. He wants people to slow down and look properly. Not for spectacle, but for dignity. “I would like them to look at it carefully and see her dignity,” he says, “despite her enormous social problems.”
The image was made on assignment for Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières), documenting displaced communities. Arcenillas is blunt about the contradiction at the heart of this kind of work. You can bear witness, you can publish, you can circulate. And still, injustice remains. “The result is that nothing changes,” he says. “We continue to live in a world with too many injustices.”
That realism shapes his view of ethics and inclusion. Arcenillas says he tries to respect social codes when photographing people, but he rejects the comfort of endless debate while suffering continues. “We are able to talk about what should or shouldn’t be included in a photograph of a person,” he says, “but we are not able to help them overcome their problems. Too much hypocrisy.” It is a hard line, and it reveals the kind of photographer he is. His loyalty is to the story, and to the people who need visibility, even when visibility is uncomfortable.
Asked what detail might be overlooked in the winning image, he does not point to technique. “The message is always the most important thing,” he says. And the method follows that conviction. Documentary work is quick. “Little time,” he says. “Everything moves very fast. Documentary photography is always about capturing an instant.” He considers himself an excellent editor, and he does not describe the selection process for this frame as a struggle. There were no dramatic trade-offs, no technical hurdles. “None,” he says.
His creative rule is a boundary he refuses to cross: if he has to direct a person, the work has already lost what it is meant to hold. “If I’m photographing someone and I have to tell them where to stand or what to do,” he says, “I’ve lost the point of my work.” He prefers to single out the subject. The image is found rather than staged. “It’s always found,” he says.
Access came through Doctors Without Borders, but Arcenillas also points to who opens doors. In the camp, he felt welcomed by refugees in a way that was not always mirrored by officials. “I always had an open door with the refugees,” he says. “I can’t say the same about the authorities.” The emotional difficulty was not in making a picture. It was in listening. “Listening to how badly they live,” he says, “the problems they have, and the neglect they suffer.”
What does he want other photographers to take from the winning frame? He does not give a technical lesson. He gives a directive. “To tell stories that matter,” he says, “and to shine a light on people who need it.”
Right now, Arcenillas is working on drought in conflict zones. He says he is aiming for “cleaner photography”. He is also preoccupied by a different kind of crisis: the flood of images and the shrinking capacity to truly see any of them, alongside the rise of prefabricated photography through apps and AI.
