Thames & Hudson presents: Looking for the silence, portraiture and photography.
Join Senior Curator of Photographs at National Portrait Gallery, Sabina Jaskot-Gill in conversation with photographer Alys Tomlinson. From nuns and masked shepherds to north London teenagers, portraits are central to Tomlinson’s long-term projects. Here, they will discuss process and practice in photographic portraiture.
Alys Tomlinson
Alys is a photographic artist based in London. She works mostly in black and white analogue on a large format camera, exploring themes of faith, ritual and identity.
Alys grew up in Brighton and studied English Literature and Communications at the University of Leeds. After graduating, she moved to New York for a year and was given her first commission for Time Out, before returning to London to study photography at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. She later completed an MA in Anthropology of Travel, Tourism and Pilgrimage (Distinction) at SOAS, University of London, which tied in with her long-term, personal project about pilgrimage.
Her book Ex-Voto was published by GOST Books in 2019 and Lost Summer was self-published in 2020. Alys recently finished work on a feature-length documentary film Mother Vera co-directed with Cécile Embleton. Her latest project Gli Isolani (The Islanders) was published by GOST Books in 2022. She combines commissioned work for editorial, design and advertising clients with personal work, which she publishes and exhibits.
Alys’s work is collected privately and is in the following collections: National Portrait Gallery (London), The Rencontres d’Arles Collection, The Bodleian Library, AmberSide Collection.
Sabina Jaskot-Gill
Sabina Jaskot-Gill is Senior Curator, Photography, at the National Portrait Gallery, London where she develops and curates exhibitions and displays of photography and new media. Recent examples include The Face: Culture Shift (2025), Hold Still (2020), Only Human: Martin Parr (2019), John Stezaker: Portrait (2019).
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