Watch the video about het nominees and winners of the Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize and the Rabo Photographic Portrait Talent 2021.
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Winner Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize 2021: Martijn van de Griendt.
Martijn van de Griendt is the winner of the Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize 2021 with his portrait of Luka. ‘We see at a boy who is in-between adolescence and adulthood. Doubt and poise seem to alternate rapidly. His disposition, however, is self-aware and authentic. The setting, colour scheme and particularly the photographer’s informal approach, gives the photo its intimate quality.’ (From the jury report)
The jury, chaired by Verily Klaassen (Head of Art Affairs, Rabobank Netherlands), compiled a long list of eighteen portraits from the approximately 500 submissions. Five portraits were placed on the shortlist. The winner who receives a cash prize of € 10,000, was announced on Wednesday, September 15, 2021.
In this analogue photographed portrait of a young man named Luka, Van de Griendt tried to find the same intimacy and vulnerability he seeks when photographing a female muse.
Martijn van de Griendt (1970) was fourteen when he started photographing the world around him. He first completed his Journalism Studies before entering the Royal Academy of Arts. He has been working as a photographer for over 25 years. Young people are a common thread in his work. He won a Zilveren Camera award several times and in 2018/2019 he was given the annual commission from the Rijksmuseum: Document Nederland.
Rabo Photographic Portrait Talent
For the fourth time there is a prize for photographic portrait talent.
Talent is defined as follows: photography students or photographers who graduated from a Dutch photography academy, as well as self-taught photographers who have been active as a professional photographer for less than five years.
The Rabo Photographic Portrait Talent is awarded to the maker of the best portrait series made in the past year. The prize is awarded by the Portrait Gallery, Rabobank as an incentive to a student or professional who has worked as a photographer for under five years at the time of submission.
Ten longlist portrait series have been selected from around 100 submissions.
Winner Rabo Photographic Portrait Talent 2021: Bram Engelaar with the series ‘Matar a Saudade’.
‘It’s admirable how the photographer made a series about something abstract like a ‘feeling’ and how he managed to have his models express a certain level of melancholy, without this coming across as an acted emotion. Concentration and time are undeniably two elements which allowed the sitters and the photographer to achieve this.’ (From the jury report)
Bram Engelaar (1994) graduated from Hogeschool Utrecht in 2019 in Communication & Multimedia Design, after which he became an autodidact photographer. He does analog photography projects with a poetic visual language and people as a central theme. To deepen his conceptual skills, he is apprenticed to photographer Milan Gies.
Read more about the nominees here:
Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize 2021 Martijn van de Griendt, Jouk Oosterhof, Zahra Reijs, Frank Ruiter and Philippe Vogelenzang.
Rabo Photographic Portrait Talent 2021 Bram Engelaar, Lara Verheijden and Farren van Wyk.
The prize
The winner of the Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize receives 10,000 euros and will be included in the Rabo art collection. In addition, the work may be acquired by another international art collection.
The winner of the Rabo Photographic Portrait Talent will receive 2,500 euros and the work may be acquired.
Exhibition
From 16-30 September 2021 the winning portraits can be seen in an A0 poster campaign in Amsterdam.
The portrait of Van de Griendt and the series by Engelaar can also be seen at the Portrait Gallery Studio on the Marineterrein in Amsterdam.
Opening hours: September 18, 19, 25 and 26, 1-4 pm.
Jury 2021
Verily Klaassen (Head of Art Affairs, Rabobank Netherlands) – Chairman
Sanne Donders (Winner Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize 2020)
Iris Kensmil (Visual artist)
Sybren Kuiper (Graphic designer)
Philippien Noordam (Senior Art Advisor/Curator at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Erik Vroons (Chief Editor GUP Magazine and freelance curator & writer)
About
The Rabo Photographic Portrait Prize is awarded yearly to the photographer who took the best photographic portrait of the past year. The prize is awarded by Dutch National Portrait Gallery in collaboration with Rabobank.
Previous winners are Koos Breukel, Sanne Donders, Stephan Vanfleteren, Gerard Wessel, Annaleen Louwes, Sander Troelstra, Jitske Schols, Sarah Mei Herman and Robin de Puy, who won the prize twice.
