35,000-Ton Fungus and Still Lifes Made of Countries: Summing Up THE LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2026
A few days ago, the results of the LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2026 were announced — a prestigious competition by one of the most respected photography platforms in the world.
If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of exploring the winning works, we encourage you to take a look at them on the LensCulture website.
Leaving aside the tempting question of what art photography is and what it is not, we carefully and with great interest looked through the works of all 40 finalists. Completely different both aesthetically and conceptually, these remarkably unique, metaphorical, and visually striking photographs can also serve as an indicator of where contemporary photography is heading. In this brief review, we would like to share several observations about the finalists, as well as some of our personal impressions.
Small and Personal
As in the previous year, among the main winners we see projects that explore life on a deeply personal level. Projects about global climate change, wars, humanitarian catastrophes, or extinction are extremely rare here. In art photography, personal stories prevail — stories that are often untold and overlooked. Although there are also globally oriented projects among the finalists (the remarkable Cartographica by Linda Webster being a strong example), the overall tendency feels similar: the majority of projects focus on individuals or small groups of people — their experiences, their dreams, their reflections, their pain, and their joys.
Alternative Processes
Film photography, collage, cyanotype. Experiments with chemistry, embroidery, and exposure. The richness of techniques in this competition is striking. It is rare to see a competition that demonstrates such a richness of technical approaches to what a photographic image can become. And it is genuinely exciting to observe how artists continue to stretch the definition of what photography is today and what it can be.
Identity and Identities
As in many other contemporary photography institutions, identity remains one of the central themes. It is no coincidence that the winner of the Single Image category presents a work titled Identity. The fact that photographic exploration today is directed not only outward but also inward is, in our view, one of the defining characteristics of contemporary photography.
Observations and Notes
It is interesting to see how a competition like this challenges many common assumptions — not only about photography itself, but also about what a “proper” submission should look like.
For example, many photo competitions explicitly state that frames are not allowed. But what if the frame is part of the image, part of the photographic scan? Lisa Murray chose not to crop out the borders of her images and took first place.
Or consider the widespread, often unspoken idea that a project description should be deep and address as many themes as possible. One of the Jurors’ Picks is introduced with a simple description:
“This series tells the story of a heartbreak.”
We also often hear that a project should remain consistent in its use of color. Yet many artists do not think strictly in color or strictly in black and white. In this competition, we see numerous projects (both among the winners and finalists) that combine the two. The final selection seems to suggest that color can be anything at all. Even sepia, which many photographers tend to avoid.
We hope that, like us, you were pleased and inspired by the results of this competition and by the remarkable works of its winners. From time to time, we plan to publish short articles on our website in order to expand the dialogue around photography and maybe even inspire someone to pick up a camera today to start a new project.
