By Siobhan Heanue
Updated 51 minutes ago
It was the “power of the subject’s gaze” that won over judges.
It is often assumed that to win one of the high-profile art prizes offered in Australia, you have to be a well-established artist – or at least an up-and-coming professional with a strong foothold in the art world.
The winner of this year’s National Photographic Portrait Prize has dashed those expectations.
Scott Bycroft is a teacher at the Clontarf Aboriginal College in Perth, an institute renowned for its sports program.
The 37-year-old teaches art and the humanities and is highly committed to his students and to Indigenous education.
He has a background in visual arts, but he only started taking photographs seriously a couple of years ago. He is entirely self-taught.
“I was very surprised to be selected as a finalist,” Mr Bycroft said.
“I just about fell off my chair.
“But it’s good to see that spontaneity has its place in photography. I guess a lot of the world’s most compelling images are spontaneous.”
Mr Bycroft won the $25,000 prize with a compelling image of one of his students, Zareth Long, taken on impulse at a school swimming carnival.
The young man did not pose for the picture, but simply gazed into the lens long enough for Mr Bycroft to snap the winning shot, before turning back to watch the races.
“I sort of recognised a bit of a photographic opportunity I suppose,” Mr Bycroft said.
“I often carry my camera around, photographing the kids here for purposes at school, and he was in that pose and it just sort of transpired organically.”
Dr Chris Chapman is a curator at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra and was on the judging panel.
He says the black and white image of Zareth Long is emblematic of the more classical, head and shoulders portraiture that dominated the art form before the advent of digital photography.
But it is the strength and power of the subject’s gaze, as well as the technical mastery and composition of the piece, that won over the judges.
“The photograph has a fantastic power, it has terrific clarity as an image,” Dr Chapman said.
Coming of age
It is the third year the competition has been run by Canberra’s National Portrait Gallery.
Director Andrew Sayers says it has come of age this year.
“The diversity and the quality and the technical skill is quite remarkable in this year’s exhibition,” he said.
There were over 1,000 entries from both professional and aspiring photographers.
They have been whittled down to 48 finalists, whose work will be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery, before the free exhibition tours to several regional galleries around Australia.
“The diversity, quality and technical skill is quite remarkable in this year’s exhibition,” Mr Sayers said.
There is a noticeable lack of famous faces among the images.
While the images themselves are technically refined, the faces captured are unpolished and refreshingly real.
Democratic art
Photographic portraiture has experienced a resurgence in popularity in recent years, something the gallery is capitalising on with strong visitor numbers.
In an age when almost anyone can pick up a camera and make art or tell stories, the art form is democratic and this competition represents a level playing field among the swathe of premier art prizes offered by galleries around the nation.
The stories behind the subjects are often as intimate as the images themselves.
There is the image of a woman and her daughter, standing defiant at the verge of their Victorian property that was spared the devastation of bushfire.
Another gripping image is of a man in a squat in inner-city Melbourne, slumped in a walking frame so only the top of his head is visible to the lens.
The 65-year-old is surrounded by the detritus of his temporary living space, the brightly graffitied walls behind him a sharp contrast to his shadowy form.
The photographer, Hannah Robinson, befriended the group of squatters who lived in an abandoned building near her house and took the picture just as she turned to leave one day.
This image, as much as any other in the exhibition, exemplifies why portraiture, particularly paired with the immediacy and realism of photography, remains so popular.
It makes the stranger familiar.
