Royal Photographic Society awards 2024 – in pictures

The RPS award for photojournalism: Samar Abu Elouf

The Light from Hell. Playing with fire at sunset. The sea is the only outlet here, 9 November 2022. Samar Abu Elouf is an award-winning Palestinian freelance photojournalist, covering events where she lives. Abu Elouf documented the 2018–19 Gaza border protests, also known as the Great March of Return. In May 2021, on assignment for the New York Times, she covered 11 days of fighting between Israel and Hamas that destroyed essential infrastructure and killed more than 230 people, including several of her own relatives

Gaza, 7 October 2023

Running from the sound of bombing, 11 October 2023

The RPS award for editorial or documentary photography: Darcy Padilla

Wounded Knee, Pine Ridge Reservation, February 2015, US, from the series Dreamers. Darcy Padilla is an associate professor of art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member photographer of Agence VU’ in Paris. Known for her narrative photography, Padilla focuses on long-term projects that explore themes of struggle and the transgenerational effects of socioeconomic issues

San Francisco, California, September 2024. From the series Family Love

From the series the Aids Hotel, San Francisco, 1992-97. At the height of the Aids epidemic during the early 1990s, the Ambassador hotel in San Francisco helped the overcrowded hospitals. Serving the poorest of the poor, housing those with nowhere to go and for whom nothing more could be done apart from daily doses of morphine

LA, California, September 2024. From the series California Dreamin’

The RPS award for fashion, advertising and commercial photography: Campbell Addy

Theatre of Dreams for The Ready, Set, Go! Issue, Dazed Magazine. Campbell Addy is a British-Ghanaian artist, photographer and director. He draws inspiration from his culturally diverse upbringing, which has informed an intricate discovery of the self and a unique eye. His striking imagery has garnered him international success and awards including the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 list and the British fashion awards in 2018 and 2019. His monograph Feeling Seen debuted in 2022 to critical acclaim

Photographed in July 2024 for the NiiJournal IV: Pride? issue

Birthed from Addy’s vision of creating a publication that embraces and encourages diversity, NiiJournal illuminates the representation (or lack thereof) and the hardships that certain groups have endured along with their triumphs and inspiring life stories. The Pride? issue explored the intricate relationship between queerness and Blackness – two identities that have shaped a unique culture but face persistent political oppression

From the series A love letter to the motherland, for the Wall Street Journal Magazine

The RPS award for photography with young people: Carolyn Mendelsohn

From the series Through Our Lens, Harry Berry, 16. Carolyn Mendelsohn is an artist and portrait photographer whose practice is rooted in telling stories and amplifying those quieter voices through co-produced portraits. Recognised internationally for her portraits, and work with young people, Carolyn founded Through Our Lens, initially responding to the pandemic and working with young people on Zoom, a workshop and mentoring programme enabling people to tell their stories through photography

From the series Through Our Lens, Morgan Foord, 2020.’These images signify the feeling I have at the moment surrounding school. I love being back as it is giving me a sense of normality while I also get back to learning about subjects I enjoy. However, I can’t shrug off this feeling of being almost trapped. All of the safety precautions seem so unnatural and absurd compared to our old normality, so much that it feels as though I’m trapped in some strange movie. I keep reading media coverage about the surrounding schools that are getting cases of Covid-19 that it is almost now, becoming a waiting game for my school to be affected by it.’ Morgan

Grace Nyoni, 15, from the series Age of Wonder 6 June 2024.Age of Wonder – Portraits of Young People in Bradford, is an ongoing portrait project by Carolyn Mendelsohn, artist in residence for Born in Bradford. The series explores the lives of young people from 12 years old upwards

Honorary fellowship: Marilyn Nance

Festac Village: Sun Ra rehearsing on the keyboard, with Kamau Seitu (of the Wajumbe Cultural Ensemble) on tap drums

Honorary fellowship: James Balog

Ice Diamond #1, 2009

Honorary fellowship: Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen

Children with Collected Junk, from Byker, 1971. Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen is a Finnish-British photographer who has worked in Britain since the 1960s. She lived in Byker in Newcastle from 1969, and for seven years photographed and interviewed the residents of this area of terrace houses until her own house was demolished. By the time Konttinen arrived in Byker, the neighbourhood was already scheduled for demolition, to make way for the Byker Wall estate

Honorary fellowship: Michelle Sank

From the Series Ballade. ‘Ballade is a poetic homage to my birthplace, Cape Town. My strongest memories are of the Sea Point Promenade and its accompanying Pavilion swimming pool of my formative years.Michelle Sank cites her background of growing up in South Africa during apartheid and being the child of immigrant parents as informing her interest in subcultures and the exploration of contemporary social issues and challenges. Her work has won many awards including the Taylor Wessing portrait prize

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Dorcas and her mother, Esther, in their back garden, 2024, from the series Burnthouse Lane.The Burnthouse Lane estate was first dreamt up by Exeter council in the idealistic 1920s to rehouse people from the West Quarter slum. Designed along garden city lines and purposely self-contained, it was a place for working-class families to live. The deprivation it was supposed to overcome has continued to haunt it, but the isolated nature of the estate and its intricate labyrinth of lanes have also made for positives, such as a close-knit community and a sense of solidarity among the residents.’

Honorary fellowship: Ami Vitale

National Geographic photographer and film-maker Ami Vitale’s work has consistently highlighted the urgent need for conservation and this image records a Kenya Wildlife Service triumph : the successful translocation of 21 critically endangered rhinos from three reserves to Loisaba conservancy, where rhinos had not been seen for 50 years owing to poaching. This is the moment a rhino was resuscitated after it stopped breathing and then quickly released