2025 Nikon Emerging Photographer Award: Shortlist Announced
We’re delighted to reveal the shortlisted artists for the 2025 Photo London x Nikon Emerging Photographer Award.
Launched in 2015, the Emerging Photographer Award, presented in partnership with Nikon, was set up to nurture and enable the career development of emerging photographic artists, placing their work within the public programme of one of the world’s most celebrated fairs championing the photographic medium. The Award champions new lens-based artists by offering transformative opportunities through Photo London’s global reach and the generous support of Nikon.
“At the heart of Nikon’s business is our mission to empower photographers to tell the world’s most important stories. Over the last six years of supporting this prestigious award alongside Photo London, we have seen story and art converge in myriad and breathtaking ways. This year’s shortlist is no different, and it remains one of our great privileges as a brand to play a part in the future of these talented creators.”
— Julian Harvie, Nikon’s Marketing Director for Northern Europe
The winner will be announced at a special reception at the Nikon Gallery during the Photo London VIP Preview, Wednesday 14th May at 18:15.
2025 Shortlisted Artists
Kristoffer Axén | Albumen Gallery (London, UK)
© the Artist / courtesy Albumen Gallery
Artist Biography:
Kristoffer Axén (b. 1984, Stockholm), studied fine art at the International Center of Photography in New York between 2008-2009, a city in which he lived and worked in until 2013.
As a child, Kristoffer was very interested in film and wanted to be a filmmaker, but because he enjoyed working more solitary, this led him to photography. This in turn led him to painting, which became a main part of the artist’s influence and felt he was missing out by not also working in this medium.
About the Project:
Working across the two media – photography and painting – characteristically informs Kristoffer’s approach to creating images as well as his style. Kristoffer Axen’s camera ‘paints’ psychological landscapes that express an underlying mood and atmosphere. In his latest series of photographs, Kristoffer Axén lets the textural aspect of imagery take a larger part of the narrative. Layers of abstract elements interact with the photographs which are reduced of their main descriptive elements. Emerging are then windows of meditation – silent vistas to a world behind the image, where a cold and ominous tone collaborates with the restful and contemplative – all printed on a Japanese fibre paper that further brings out the tactile elements of the imagery.
Sandra Chen Weinstein | 3C Gallery (Los Angeles, USA)
© the Artist / courtesy 3C Gallery
Artist Biography:
Sandra has lived and worked in Washington DC, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Canada while working with American Agency. She found her passion in photography as a medium of art in 2008. Early in her photo career in 2009, she was chosen as the only American photographer among hundreds of applicants for Magnum Masterclasses in The Netherlands and in London,
England. Sandra’s photography has received many outstanding National and International Awards including Nomination for Prix Pictet, winner for OpenWall#4 British Journal of Photography, State of the World Prix de la Photographie Award Paris. First Place for Allegany Arts Council, First Place Director Choice Award for CENTER 2020, First Place KLPA Portraits Prize Award, National Geographic Magazine International Contest and Conservation Award Runner Up for Culture, etc. Her works has been exhibited in Galerie Huit Arles France, The Phillips Collection, Museum of Fine Art Washington County, Aperture Gallery, Annenberg Space of Photography, Florida Museum of Photographic Art, Griffin Museum of Photography, and Whitechapel gallery and among many others. Her work is in several private collections, including that of the Gordon Parks Foundation.
About the Project:
“Transcend” explores love and relationships within the LGBTQA+ community, focusing on individuals and their natural and chosen families in intimate, familiar environments. The project is deeply personal—it includes my own story, as my adult child recently came out as queer, transgender, and non-binary at 28. Through photography and interviews, I’ve documented the diverse experiences of LGBTQA+ individuals and their families, capturing their stories in various U.S. cities and around the globe, including Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and Iceland.
Rose Marie Cromwell | EUQINOM Gallery (San Francisco, USA)
© the Artist / courtesy EUQINOM Gallery
Artist Biography:
Rose Marie Cromwell (b.1983 in Sacramento, CA, based in Miami) is a photographer and artist, whose work explores the effects of globalization on the local and the tenuous space between the political and the spiritual. Her first book “El Libro Supremo de la Suerte” was published in 2018 by TIS books, and was awarded the Light Work Photo Book Prize named one of the “25 Best Photobooks of 2018” by TIME Magazine. In 2021 she published two books, “Eclipse” by TIS Books, and “A More Fluid Atmosphere” by Pomegranate Press. Her first solo museum exhibition was at ICA Miami in 2024, and currently has a solo exhibition up at Pier 24 in San Francisco. In 2024 she was one of five artists exhibiting work in Truth Told Slant: Contemporary Documentary Photography at The High Museum in Atlanta. Cromwell is recipient of a Fulbright Grant, A Getty Reportage grant, and was a Light Work AIR. Cromwell’s work is in the collections of The High Museum, The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, The MET Library, The MoMA Library and The SFMoMA Library.
About the Project:
In her series, El Libro Supremo de la Suerte, Rose Marie Cromwell offers a profound exploration of Havana through photographs taken over seven years. The title, meaning “The Supreme Book of Luck,” references the charadas—booklets used to interpret everyday objects and experiences into numbers for a covert lottery system in Havana. Cromwell draws parallels between this practice and her photography, describing how ordinary moments like “a turtle on the sidewalk” or “a can of red paint” became meaningful and monumental through her lens. For Cromwell, this work represents a personal and artistic coming of age, as well as a tribute to the symbols and experiences that shaped her understanding of the city.
Through richly colored and evocative imagery, Cromwell captures the intimacy of her connection with Havana, rejecting objectivity and embracing her role as both observer and participant. Cromwell’s work lyrically intertwines the precision of numbers with the mysticism of luck, celebrating a culture that defies easy interpretation. Co-published by Light Work, the book received the Light Work Photobook Award 2018, which honors emerging and underrepresented artists deserving of international recognition. El Libro Supremo de la Suerte is both an homage to Havana and a testament to Cromwell’s deeply personal and immersive artistic practice.
Robin Hunter Blake | Guerin Projects (London, UK)
© the Artist / courtesy Guerin Projects
Artist Biography:
Robin Hunter Blake is a British-American photographer and director based in London. His work is deeply romantic and enquires upon values of identity and philosophy, using the camera as a tool to decode and search for the nuances that make up the human experience. The pieces are about passion, anger, lust and fervour. Robin Graduated with a first from the University of the Arts London in July 2021. His works reference Simon Stampfer’s stroboscopic discord of 1833, which was notably used in the work of Dr. Harold Edgerton (1903-1990). It is a highly developed technical feet, which used in Robin’s context only enhances the psychological value of the work. His practice also references Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) and his description of motion and deconstruction of movement. The scientific and mathematical value of Muybridge’s work had a great impact on Modernist and Impressionists artists like Rodin (1840-1917) and Edgar Degas (1834-1917). Edgerton’s ‘Chronophotography’ was collected by Rodin, the sculptor also commissioned photographs of his sculptures This use and play with motion is inherent to Robin Hunter Blake’s work, which consequently have an incredible sculptural quality.
About the Project:
Resonance explores the ongoing conversation between body and soul—using photography as the medium through which that dialogue is shaped. Each image begins with an emotional undertone — love, pain, lust, chaos, fervour— and from there, movement is orchestrated. These emotions do not serve simply as themes, but as tools to guide gesture, to influence pace, and to shape the eventual form of the image. In this sense, emotion becomes a thread back to the soul—subtle, often obscured, but always present.
The earliest images were solitary and instinctive—self-portraits made while shadowboxing. They were instinctive. At the time, there was no desire to perform, only a need to understand. When words failed, the image became a container for something difficult to articulate. The act of making was less about producing a photograph and more about visualising emotion in real time—as if to trace what could not be spoken. Photography offered a space not to document reality, but to make sense of it—especially when reality felt like it was dissolving from within.
Niccolò Montesi | Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain (Paris, France)
© the Artist / courtesy Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain
Artist Biography:
Niccolò Montesi is an Italian artist born in 1977 in Padua, currently residing and working in Milan. He studied architecture at the University of East London and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. His education in photography includes courses at the Toscana Photographic Workshop in Pantelleria, the International Center of Photography School in New York, and the Academia di Fotografia John Kaverdash in Milan. Montesi explores architectural themes, focusing on the interplay between urban landscapes and human perception. His projects include “Pantelleria Paese”, “Water End”, “Waiting for Summer”, “The Reality of Individualism”, “Summer Cities”, “Mediolanum Urbe”. These places, marked by a singular architectural history, become the terrain for visual experiments in which the geometry of the spaces and the softness of the light combine in a visual poetry that invites deeper contemplation. Niccolò Montesi invites us to rediscover the beauty of architecture from an almost painterly angle.
About the Project:
In the heart of the Ferrarese plain, Tresigallo stands as a place steeped in history and beauty that defies time. This town, known for its rationalist architecture and open spaces, becomes a new stage for the artist. Montesi’s photographs create a new dialogue through the imposition of a ‘horizon’ and its sharp ‘cuts’ of the sky. Each photograph is an invitation to contemplate, to be transported by a beauty that goes beyond the visible. The light that plays on the pictorial surfaces, the colours that blend and the lines that intertwine tell stories of a world where reality and fantasy meet. In this visual journey, Tresigallo is transformed into a symbol of inner research, a place where time seems to stand still and where every corner can reveal a new meaning. Tresigallo and the sea, a journey, an opportunity to immerse oneself in a universe of beauty, paying homage to a town that is, to all intents and purposes, a living work of art.
Hannah Norton | House of Bandits by Sarabande Foundation (London, UK)
© the Artist / courtesy Sarabande Foundation
Artist Biography:
Hannah Norton (b.1992) is a socially engaged documentary photographer who works with individuals and communities that have been under and/or misrepresented in the mainstream media. Through long term engagement and collaborative practice centred around portraiture, she finds visual language that disrupts stereotypes and informs new ways of thinking. Norton received her MA in documentary photography from the London College of Communication. She has consecutively won British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain, won LensCulture’s critic choice award, been published by Hoxton Mini Press, and exhibited at the Royal Photographic Society and as part of Palm Photo Prize. She has been commissioned by The Financial Times, BBC and Saatchi & Saatchi.
About the Project:
Girlhood is a time for play and exploration, figuring out who you are in relation to the world around you. This work is a document of girlhood but not a documentary, I want to create space for play and self-expression that exists in parallel to their day to day. A moment that offers the girls a pause away from the noise. I hope this process of image making allows space for the girls to exercise the best parts of themselves. I want these pictures to serve as a mirror that reflects back the parts they are most proud of. It’s so easy during girlhood to have the loudest parts of you drowned out by all the noise of societal pressures. This series is an observation of the transformation that takes place between the ages of 10 and 18. Through portraits I’ve followed girls like Mia, a fearless 10-year-old, through the shifting landscape of adolescence. At ten there’s a rawness, and still some freedom from the external noise. But as they grow, they begin to absorb the world, its expectations, its contradictions and its pressures. This project observes that shift, not as a loss, but as a metamorphosis.
Tjitske Oosterholt | Contour Gallery (Rotterdam, Netherlands)
© the Artist / courtesy Contour Gallery
Artist Biography:
Tjitske Oosterholt’s (1991, Amsterdam NL) practice is rooted in an intuitive and experimental interaction with matter, in which craftsmanship and the innovative use of photographic techniques play a central role. In her work she’s interested in the transience of our natural world, and how we as human beings relate to, experience and perceive this. As we ourselves are part of the natural world, she examines the way in which we interact with our surroundings and make sense of this ever-changing world around us.
“I believe the power of art lies in its non-linguistic forms: in the way you can think with and through material by means of interactions, without using words. Therefore I focus on the use of my intuition rather than a previously outlined concept. By letting the material go its own way, I can discover new combinations and interesting textures, which guide me into further visual and theoretical explorations. As an artist, I think it’s very important to realize and admit that the material (be this the material I work with or everything that’s happening around me) is so much more in charge than myself. An artist is not a mastermind, it’s just someone who’s endlessly curious.”
About the Project:
The series ‘A Continual Unfolding’ is an exploration of the uncontrollable, of giving in to the unknown and an openness to whatever is unfolding before us. The desire we have to control our surroundings, and how on the contrary this leads to a disconnection with our natural world, has been a starting point in seeking ways of opening up to a more intuitive interaction with our environment, in which we find beauty in the unexpected. By working with Polaroid photographs, with its inherently mysterious character and often unpredictable outcome, Oosterholt allows herself to be guided by the direction the material wants to take, and to find ways of surrendering to this uncertainty. Through constructing collages out of photographic material, Oosterholt creates scenes that resemble landscapes, and the formation and disruption of natural phenomena. The final artwork is the coming together of several unique Polaroid photographs, every single one distorted in such a way that there is no image left, and only the internal materials of the Polaroid photographs remain, resulting in many small chemical landscapes of their own.
Oosterholt plays with our perception of reality and examines photography’s role within this process. By utilizing the contradiction of a photographic collage that resembles a realistic landscape, yet which is fictitious image made by puzzling together the distorted and abstracted film until the pieces connect, our conception of how the photographic image comes to life is being challenged. Due to the distortion of the film, the pieces are never fully set, constantly asking the viewer to pay attention, and to give in to the uncertainty of not knowing what the work might look like in the future. The instability of the materials, as well as the imagery of natural phenomena, touch upon themes of changes within our natural surroundings and our relationship to this, and of finding acceptance and beauty in the natural ebb and flow of the world around us.
Lindsay Perryman | Palm* Studios (London, UK)
© the Artist / courtesy Palm* Studios
Artist Biography:
Lindsay Perryman is a multifaceted artist whose work explores the existence and visibility of transgender identities. Perryman utilises their practice to challenge and rewrite misconceptions about the spectrum of identity. The backdrop of their hometown serves as a significant influence, grounding their practice in a personal yet universal context. As a non-binary trans person, Perryman draws on their lived experiences to inform and respond to critical questions posed by theorists such as Judith Butler and bell hooks. Perryman creates a dialogue that bridges theory and practice, providing a visceral and nuanced interpretation of identity. They rely on a cultivated visual awareness to reinterpret and redefine the archival of queerness.
About the Project:
5 TOPS was created from the desire to display transmasculine vulnerability. My experience with top surgery, with its many stages of tenderness, holds the urgency, trauma, and grief it took to become myself. TOPS is a short film expanding into a photography book of images captured before, during and after filming. Zaire says, “I wouldn’t have been able to get this surgery without community.” The aftermath illuminated the gift of community, as well as the potential dangers for those who do not have it. Although everyone’s experiences are not alike, romanticizing the healing process was a part of recovery. The recurring presence of scarring holds the weight of not just physical change, but emotional and communal healing. Many of those featured in TOPS refer to the commitment of their caregivers devoting time to their wellbeing, granting them the access to a greater depth of resilience many hadn’t accessed before. Zaire and Blaize sit across one another in a shared vulnerability, while Zaire applies gel to Blaize’s surgical scars, revealing the act of communal strength in connection and familiarity. The documentation of TOPS serves as a righteous act to maintain the scarce legacy and commitment to the archival of transgender identities.
Gabriel Pinto | BETA Contemporary (Barcelona, Spain)
© the Artist / courtesy BETA Contemporary
Artist Biography:
Gabriel Pinto’s connection with his roots takes him to Barlovento, where he finds his vocation as a maker and cultural researcher. He creates from ancestral codes and knowledge that he has learned from generation to generation since he was young. He explores different media such as photography, sound and plastic arts in order to communicate knowledge, memory, tradition and Venezuelan contemporaneity.
Gabriel Pinto, born in Caracas in 1998 raised in Barlovento, is an Afro-Venezuelan artist whose work dives into the
depths of the identity and cultural roots of his land. His artistic gaze is a bridge between the past and the present,
between ancestral codes and contemporaneity.
About the Project:
What does a land remember of its people – of their births, their deaths, their songs, their silences?
In El Mampulorio, Gabriel Pinto presents a powerful photographic series based on a funerary rite of African origin practiced in parts of Venezuela. In this tradition, the death of a young child is not seen as a tragedy, but as a transition into angelic existence. The community gathers not to mourn, but to celebrate: dressing the child in festive garments, adorning the space with flowers, and offering music, dance, food, and prayer. It is a farewell rooted in joy, not sorrow.
Pinto’s work approaches this ritual with profound care and reverence. His images do not simply document; they participate. Through composed, intimate frames, he captures a worldview where death is not an end, but a transformation—where the soul survives, and the community affirms life through collective remembrance.
This series stands as a testament to the spiritual and cultural resilience of Afro-Venezuelan communities. In witnessing El Mampulorio, Pinto offers a vision of mourning that is also a celebration—one that reclaims the funeral as a space of beauty, belonging, and continuity.
Silvana Trevale | Sorondo Projects (Barcelona, Spain)
© the Artist / courtesy Sorondo Projects
Artist Biography:
Silvana Trevale, born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, is a photographer whose work merges portraiture, documentary, and fashion photography. Her practice celebrates the beauty of the human body, her Latin American heritage, womanhood, youth, and the lived experiences of those around her.The deepening crisis in Venezuela led her to create the series Venezuelan Youth, marking the beginning of a long-term engagement with her country’s younger generations. Since 2017, she has returned to Venezuela annually to document the everyday lives of women, children, and youth, portraying their resilience and dignity amidst ongoing turmoil. Over the past two years, Silvana’s work has focused on evoking childhood memories and the nostalgic elements of her homeland—the ocean, the sun, and the warmth of familiar places. Her creative mission is to honor the layered reality of Venezuela, a country where beauty and chaos coexist in fragile harmony. Witnessing the persistence of tradition through times of adversity has inspired her to preserve these moments, ensuring they are not lost to time. Her work is now gaining international recognition, with recent exhibitions during Miami Art Week 2024 and in art fairs across Spain, particularly in group shows centered on community and identity.
About the Project:
Defining culture or identity within a country is rarely straightforward. Often, culture stems from influences tied to specific regions or communities and becomes widely adopted, whether through popularity, social movements, or imposed narratives. Such was the case during Juan Vicente Gómez’s dictatorship in Venezuela (1908–1935), when the “criollista” ideology romanticized the customs of the plains, or llano, promoting them as symbols of national identity. From proverbs to dress, this ideal was especially expressed through music, with Alma Llanera evolving from a popular zarzuela into a national emblem (Perera, 2009) and, consciously, the title of Trevale’s 2023 photographic series. However, this romanticized view does not always reflect the realities of those currently living in the plains, who may or may not engage in agricultural traditions. Still, the transmission of cultural practices, such as joropo music, helps revive and reconnect with these spaces. It is this cultural resilience that Trevale explores in Alma Llanera.
CURATORIAL COMMITTEE
The photographers above have been shortlisted by the Photo London 2025 Curatorial Committee. Photo London is a place to encounter the most innovative emerging artists, new work by established masters and rare vintage pieces, and as such is guided by a Curatorial Committee comprised of some of the field’s most esteemed curators, critics and museum directors.
Philippe Garner (Chair) – Former Director at Christie’s and International Head of Photographs and 20th Century Decorative Arts and Design
Renee Mussai – Independent curator, scholar, and writer – former Senior Curator / Head of Collection at Autograph, and Artistic Director of The Walther Collection
Simone Klein – Photography Advisor and Appraiser
Sofia Vollmer de Maduro – Director of Programs, Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, collector and Curator Emeritus of the Alberto Vollmer Foundation collection
Martin Barnes – Senior Curator, Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Tristan Lund – Art Consultant, Dealer and Collection Curator of The Incite Project, a UK based collection of photojournalism and documentary photography. Tristan also represents a select group of emerging photographic artists.
Brandei Estes – Former Head of Photographs (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Sotheby’s