The Royal Photographic Society has unveiled the winners of its prestigious 2025 awards, marking the 147th year of what is recognized as the world's longest-running photography prize. The awards celebrate exceptional talent and contributions across both the artistic and scientific aspects of photography, with this year's recipients representing a diverse mix of emerging artists and established professionals.
Founded in 1878, the Royal Photographic Society Awards have consistently focused on honoring photography as an art form, even as the medium itself has undergone dramatic transformations over nearly a century and a half. The organization notes that the 2025 winners' work serves as "a testament to the power of photography to inspire, uplift, incite change and bring about personal, social, and cultural wellbeing." The awards recognize excellence across three primary areas: the art of photography, the science of photography, and the knowledge and understanding of photography and moving images.
The most prestigious honor, the RPS Centenary Medal, was awarded to Devon-based photographer Susan Derges, who is recognized as one of the most influential camera-less photographers of her generation. Born in 1955, Derges studied painting in London and Berlin during the 1970s, which laid the foundation for her later photographic explorations. She creates fascinating photographic artwork in nature without using traditional cameras or lenses, instead working directly with photosensitive materials and natural processes.
Derges' innovative techniques include exposing the physical movement of rivers and oceans onto photosensitive materials at night using moonlight, carefully composing plants and other natural elements in front of photosensitive paper before exposing them to light, and even exposing photosensitive materials to sound waves, allowing the frequencies themselves to create the final prints. Throughout her lengthy career, during which her work has been awarded and exhibited worldwide, Derges has maintained a strong physical connection to nature through photography, consistently pushing the boundaries of what photography can be and how people relate to the natural world.
The RPS Award for Achievement in the Art of Photography went to Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, who began his career in landscape photography before transitioning to fine art portraiture and fashion photography, where he has gained international acclaim. Diop's work has been exhibited at prestigious venues including the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, and the Musée de la Photographie de Saint-Louis in Senegal. His vivid, imaginative, and visually striking artwork extends beyond photography, as he is also accomplished as a writer, fashion designer, and textile artist.
In the under-30 category for Achievement in the Art of Photography, English-Pakistani photographer Tami Aftab received recognition for her work exploring concepts of family, identity, and play. Aftab's photography is celebrated for its ability to approach sensitive topics with warmth and lightness. She began her photographic journey with a personal project involving her father, who suffers from short-term memory loss, creating humorous staged portraits that dealt with this challenging topic. This series informed her debut photography book, "The Rice is on the Hob," which was photographed in Lahore and explored themes of food, heritage, and how memory relates to family.
Aftab's vibrant, playful style crosses numerous genre boundaries, encompassing fashion, portraiture, and lifestyle photography. Her distinctive approach has attracted major clients including Adidas, Apple, and Burberry, and her work has been exhibited at renowned venues such as the National Portrait Gallery, ICA, and The Photographers Gallery.
The RPS Award for Environmental Responsibility was presented to Ragnar Guðni Axelsson, who has spent more than four decades photographing the people, animals, and landscapes of remote Arctic regions. His incredible black-and-white photographs capture the Arctic in exquisite detail, showcasing how people thrive at the very edge of civilization. Throughout his extensive career, Axelsson has documented how climate change and environmental shifts have impacted Arctic communities, effectively capturing the profound alterations in the relationships between humans and nature in these harsh environments. He is currently working on an ambitious three-year project documenting people's lives across all eight Arctic countries.
Raghu Rai, a civil engineer turned photographer, received the RPS Award for Editorial or Documentary Photography. Rai has worked as a photojournalist since the mid-1960s, serving as chief photographer for The Statesman, working for The Times in London, and joining Magnum Photos in the 1970s, where he remains a member today. His photo essays have appeared in leading publications worldwide for decades, and he has published more than 60 photography books focusing on different themes in India. In 2012, Rai and his son Nitin founded the Raghu Rai Center for Photography to share his five decades of photographic expertise with future generations of photographers.
The RPS Award for Photojournalism went to Amak Mahmoodian, a multidisciplinary artist and educator who began her career as a research-based photographer in Iran in 2003. She moved to the United Kingdom in 2010 and has been unable to return to her homeland since then. Mahmoodian's work often intersects conceptual photography with documentary work and routinely incorporates text, video, drawings, and sound alongside her photographs, creating comprehensive multimedia narratives.
David Malin received the RPS Progress Medal in the Science of Photography for his groundbreaking contributions to astronomical photography. Malin's career began at age 15 in 1957 when he started working in a chemistry lab in Manchester, initially making pesticides before transitioning to pigments and dyes. His move to Australia to work as a scientific photographer operating telescopes proved transformative. Malin's enterprising spirit and scientific expertise led him to invent methods for amplifying data on astronomical photographic plates, revealing that what appeared to be smudges were actually distant galaxies. One of these discoveries, Malin-1, remains the largest known spiral galaxy. He also developed techniques for creating true-color astronomical images, representing a significant breakthrough that spurred increased scientific research and publications in the field.
The Royal Photographic Society Awards 2025 included numerous additional recipients across categories such as achievements in the art of moving images, contributions to the science and art of photography, scientific imaging, imaging science, and photography education. The complete list of award winners and this year's class of RPS Honorary Fellows is available on the Royal Photographic Society's official website, providing comprehensive details about all honorees and their contributions to the field of photography.
