Portraits of two shoppers and a mother cradling her daughter have been shortlisted for a major international photography award.
Cybil McAddy and her baby Lulu are pictured in a series taken in a housing estate in Clapton, east London, focused on “finding the colour and beauty in the urban”.
The work, now up for the £15,000 National Portrait Gallery prize, is by Irish photographer Enda Bowe.
The “graphically-arresting image” of two shoppers is by Max Marstow and from his series Londoners.
“It was taken, swiftly, in the middle of a crowd of passers-by,” the photographer said.
“It is, unusually, both a formally successful portrait with a classic studio-aesthetic and a street photograph in the broad idiom of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Garry Winogrand.”
Another shortlisted image, by Joey Lawrence, features a child from a remote village, struggling with water-borne illnesses, in the jungle of Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province.
Alice Mann, who photographed the all-female teams of drum majorettes in South Africa’s Western Province, completes the shortlist of four photographers.
The annual Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is judged anonymously.
The portraits were selected from 4,462 submissions from 70 countries and more than 50 portraits will go on display.
National Portrait Gallery director Nicholas Cullinan said: “What was particularly striking about this year’s entries to the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, was the variety of approaches, techniques and styles of the photographs submitted from around the world.
“I hope that the works selected for the shortlist and 2018 exhibition continue to inspire and engage visitors with photographic portraiture today.”
The winner will be announced on October 16.
