Press Photographer of the year 2024 – The Results

The British Press Photographers’ Association is delighted to announce that Danny Lawson of the Press Association has been named as The Press Photographer of the Year for 2024. In an unprecedented year, Danny also won four out of the ten separate categories as voted for by members of The BPPA.

The BPPA’s Press Photographer of the Year for 2024 – Danny Lawson

Category winners

Arts & Entertainment – Danny Lawson

Business – Danny Lawson

Essay – Stefan Rousseau

News – Danny Lawson

Portrait – Danny Lawson

Royal – Aaron Chown

Sport (action) – Clive Mason

Sport (away from the action) – Adrian Dennis

Sport (major events) – (joint winners) Marc Aspland & Julian Finney

Young Photographer – Jake Lindley

 

Highly Commended

Arts & Entertainment – David Parry

Business – Tony Johnson

Essay – Dan Kitwood

News – Chris Furlong

Portrait – Fabio De Paolo

Royal – Kelvin Bruce

Sport (action) – Julian Finney & Kirsty Wigglesworth

Sport (away from the action) – Michael Steele

Young Photographer – Ryan Jenkinson

 

Over 1400 photographs taken throughout the year were entered into ten categories by photographers working in the UK and abroad. Members of the association were then invited to vote for their favourite entries in each category with members of the board then choosing the overall winning portfolio from the category winners. A competition for press photographers, judged by press photographers.

 

You can view all the Winning and Highly Commended entries in our gallery HERE.

 

Comment from the Chair:

We see the work of British press photographers every day in our newspapers and on news websites and it’s all too easy to take it for granted. Putting this much quality work together from such a wide range of photographers makes it clear that photography is still a premier medium when it comes to communicating what’s happening in the news.

2024 was a stand-out year for sports, we had a general election, civil unrest, extreme weather, a difficult year for the Royal Family and much more. Seeing our photographers respond not only to these big jobs but also finding new and visually compelling ways of approaching typical diary jobs is what sets this year’s winners apart from the crowd.

Once again, the Young Photographer category has delivered a very high standard of work and we look forward to watching them as they continue to progress their careers over the next few years.

I’d like to thank everyone for entering, judging and to the team at The BPPA for their hard work running this competition on behalf of press photographers.

Jamie Lorriman, Chair, The BPPA

 

Our response to the IPO consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Back in December the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) launched a consultation on the use of copyright material for training AI models. They pointed out that this has presented new challenges for the UK’s copyright framework, and many rights holders (especially photographers) have found it difficult to exercise our rights in this context. They pointed out that it is important that copyright continues to support the UK’s world-leading creative industries and creates the conditions for AI innovation that allows them to share in the benefits of these new technologies.

This consultation sought views on proposals to deliver against the government’s objectives for this area, which are:

  • Boosting trust and transparency between sectors, by ensuring AI developers provide right holders with greater clarity about how they use their material.
  • Enhancing right holders’ control over whether or not their works are used to train AI models, and their ability to be paid for its use where they so wish.
  • Ensuring AI developers have access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK and support innovation across the UK AI sector.

Thanks to a great deal of hard work from Board Member Andrew Wiard we have made a submission to the consultation which makes it clear that we, as photographers, have a lot to lose if the Government introduce an opt-out system for those wishing to not have their work used for creating AI models. We have pointed out that the current copyright laws, if enhanced and properly supported, offer rights holders the best chance of protection against widespread copyright theft that these AI models are employing.

If you’d like to read it, you can find The BPPA’s submission here

Voting Opens in The BPPA Press Photographer of the Year 2024

The time has come for our members to vote in the Press Photographer of The Year competition. After a last minute rush of entries we’re delighted to open the judging to all fully paid up members of the association.

Unlike many competitions out there where the judging takes place behind closed doors, with ours you see everything, every picture submitted is here for members to vote on. The BPPA exists to promote press photography and this competition is run by photographers for photographers, showcasing the very best out there.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ENTRIES

(we recommend looking on a computer rather than a phone)

All fully paid up members are entitled to vote for each category winner using the voting form which was been sent by email at 9am this morning (Monday 24th February 2025).

Please vote by 23:59 on Sunday 2nd March as we will not be extending the deadline this year. Please vote early to avoid missing the deadline.

Assignments 2024 | The BPPA Exhibition ON TOUR

France's Caroline Garcia dives in an attempt to return the ball to Czech Republic's Marie Bouzkova during their women's singles tennis match on the fifth day of the 2023 Wimbledon Championships at The All England Tennis Club in Wimbledon, southwest London, on July 7, 2023.

The best of British press photography has come to Port Sunlight in a new exhibition.

The British Press Photographers’ Association are bringing their annual exhibition, ‘Assignments 2024 – The BPPA Exhibition’, to the beautiful Bridge Cottage within historic Port Sunlight. It is the first time the exhibition has been presented in Merseyside and follows a successful showcase in London’s Southbank.

The exhibition is a showcase of the best 100 photographs from members of The BPPA, celebrating the best of press photography. Over the summer, a changing display of 50 photographs will take over Bridge Cottage, one of Port Sunlight’s most distinctive Arts and Crafts-style houses. The exhibition is presented in partnership with Port Sunlight Village Trust, the independent charity responsible for preserving and promoting the village.

Curated by five leading industry figures, this year’s exhibition covers stories from March 2023 through to the spring of 2024 and will feature everything from sports and entertainment through to politics and protest with royals, celebrities, and global events as seen through the eyes of the association’s photographers.

Founded in the mid-1980s, The BPPA has sought to promote and inspire the highest ethical, technical, and creative standards from within the industry, and once again is set to deliver an exhibition of photographs from the cutting edge of journalism.

Thanks to the support of Canon UK, Assignments 2024 is FREE to attend, with donations to Port Sunlight Village Trust welcome.

This year’s curators were photojournalist David Burnett, Reuters UK and Ireland Chief Photographer Suzanne Plunkett, photojournalist Steve Back, Press Association photographer Jane Barlow, and Getty Images sports photographer Justin Setterfield.

  • Assignments 2024 is FREE to attend.
  • The address is 10 Bridge St, Birkenhead, Wirral CH62 4UP
  • It’s open between Wednesday and Sunday from 10am to 4pm, between 8th June and 1st September 2024.

Assignments 2024 | The BPPA Exhibition opens in London

The British Press Photographers’ Association presents its annual ‘Assignments’ exhibition celebrating the best of press photography from its members.

Curated by five leading industry figures, this year’s exhibition covers stories from March 2023 through to the spring of 2024 and will feature everything from sports and entertainment to politics and protests with royals, celebrities, and global events as seen through the eyes of the association’s photographers.

Founded in the mid-1980s, The BPPA has sought to promote and inspire the highest ethical, technical, and creative standards from within the industry and once again is set to deliver an exhibition of photographs from the cutting edge of journalism.

  • Assignments 2024 is FREE to attend.
  • Open from 11am to 6pm daily between 24th May and 2nd June 2024.
  • Covers 5 floors of The Bargehouse on London’s Southbank, part of Oxo Tower Wharf.
  • Once again the BPPA bookshop will return during the exhibition.

The Bargehouse can be found on Google Maps here , you can use the post code SE1 9PH or on What3Words the location is lovely.spirit.voted

ASSIGNMENTS 2024 – THE CURATORS

We are delighted to reveal our panel of curators for Assignments 2024: The BPPA Exhibition will be David Burnett, Suzanne Plunkett, Steve Back, Jane Barlow and Justin Setterfield. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our curators for being involved in this project and feel they are a true reflection of the industry in 2024. We look forward to seeing their final selections in London and Wirral later this year.

 

David Burnett

David Burnett (born Salt Lake City, Utah 1946) learned photography at the Olympus High School yearbook, and later shot pictures for the yearbook (mostly sports) at Colorado College (BA Poli Sci ’68.)  His career as a rocket scientist was thwarted by a not-to-be-named math professor who mumbled during Calculus class.   He began working as a freelancer for Time, and later LIFE magazine in the late 1960s, spending two years covering the war in Vietnam.   Following the demise of LIFE Magazine weekly in 1972, he joined the French photo agency Gamma and traveled the world for them before subsequently founding Contact Press Images, in New York in 1975.  His work for news magazines in Europe and the US has included politics, sports, and portraiture as well as the news.  He has covered every Summer Olympic Games since 1984, as well as the 2002, 2014, and 2018 Winter Games, and photographed every American President since John F Kennedy. His awards include ‘Magazine Photographer of the Year’ from the Pictures of the Year Competition, the ‘World Press Photo of the Year’, and the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club. He has produced photographic essays for Time, Fortune, GEO, Paris-Match and ESPN Magazine.  He served on the World Press Photo Jury in 1997, 1999, and chaired the Jury in 2011. In 2018 he was awarded the Sprague Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Press Photographers Association.   He is the author of three photographic books: “Soul Rebel – An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley”,   “44 Days : Iran and the Remaking of the World,” pictures taken during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and the recently published “l’Homme Sans Gravité”  (“Man Without Gravity”)  a collection of five decades of sports pictures.

Suzanne Plunkett

Suzanne Plunkett is a veteran photojournalist who has worked as a staff photographer for the Associated Press in New York where she took one of the iconic photographs of the attacks at the U.S. World Trade on September 11, 2001. From 2003-2005, as Chief Photographer for the AP in Indonesia, Suzanne managed a team of five Jakarta-based photographers and a large network of freelancers following the Bali Bombings and during the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. Suzanne worked as Bloomberg’s UK senior photographer before joining Reuters as a staff photographer in London for seven years, where she covered the 2012 Olympics, the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, London Fashion Week, one royal wedding (Will and Kate), two royal births (George and Charlotte) and spent many rainy days outside Downing Street and rainy evenings covering Premier League matches. Suzanne left Reuters in 2015 to teach and to freelance in London for clients that included the New York Times and CNN. She founded the UK chapter of Women Photograph – an organization that works to mentor and support the work of women and nonbinary visual journalists. Suzanne returned to Reuters last year and took on the role of chief photographer for the UK and Ireland.

Steve Back

Steve Back has spent 54 years in the business, including 30 years as a staff and freelance photographer on the Daily Mail. He can now be found most weeks on Downing Street covering politics. Steve said “It’s been an amazing journey which thankfully is still not over! Best job in the world.”

Jane Barlow

Jane Barlow has been a professional press photographer for over 20 years. After working for local papers and agencies including seven years with The Scotsman, Jane joined the Press Association in 2016 as a staff photographer covering news, politics, sport and features across Scotland and sometimes beyond.

Justin Setterfield

Justin Setterfield is a sports photographer for Getty Images covering events around the world with a focus on Football. He recently won the SJA Sports Photographer of the Year and SJA 2023 Football Portfolio awards.

ASSIGNMENTS 2024 – NOW OPEN

The British Press Photographers’ Association is pleased to announce that ASSIGNMENTS 2024 is now open for entries. The BPPA Exhibition will return to London’s Bargehouse on the Southbank in May 2024.
We can also now reveal that the touring leg of ASSIGNMENTS 2024 will be moving from Wales to The Wirral! Following its 10 day showcase in London the exhibition will travel to Port Sunlight in Wirral where it will be on display for 12 weeks. We are once again seeking the best of British Press Photography from our members.
  • Entries are open NOW until midnight on Friday 5th April 2024.
  • Each member can enter up to 10 photographs taken between 11th March 2023 and 5th April 2024 (inclusive).
  • You must be a full member of The BPPA to enter – if you aren’t you can join now.
  • Thanks to our generous sponsors at Canon UK it is FREE to enter although entrants whose work is selected will be asked to pay a fee of £50 per picture towards the cost of framing (capped at £100 max). Once the exhibition tour is complete, if you wish to keep your framed print there will be an opportunity to collect it.
  • Entries will be selected anonymously by a panel of curators drawn from across the industry.

Assignments Live – International Women’s Day

The British Press Photographers’ Association, in partnership with Sony Pro Imaging, U.K. & Ireland, are delighted to announce the return of our photography talks series ‘Assignments LIVE’. To kick off the new run we are excited to reveal our International Women’s Day panel talk at The Frontline Club on Friday 8th March. We are assembling leading professionals in the field to participate in a photography-focused discussion. Our aim is to delve into the evolving role of a Press Photographer, analysing the landscape of 2024 amidst challenges such as Artificial Intelligence, the decline in newspaper print sales, the growing demand for digital content, shifts in the political sphere, and international conflicts. We will also explore the pertinent question of whether press photography still maintains its significance. Spoiler alert: Yes, it unquestionably does! Join us as we uncover the reasons behind its enduring importance. BOOK TICKETS HERE

Chair:
Alexia Singh a Senior Lecturer on BA (Hons) Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the London College of Communications,  a multimedia producer and photo editor with 20 years’ experience leading creative teams in the news and NGO sectors. During a 16 year career at Reuters News Agency she set up and managed picture desks in London, Paris, and Singapore and launched the Emmy award-winning Wider Image website for immersive storytelling. She has worked for Magnum Photos, WaterAid, DEC and Save the Children as a photo editor and producer.

Panel:
Sarah Lee – who started her professional career 24 years ago as a contract freelancer for the Guardian. She is still there. She’s also one of BAFTA’s regular photographers, and an ambassador for Leica. She recently shot a number of campaigns for Transport for London. And her book “West of West” (loosely focusing on the end of Route 66 in California) was published by Unbound early in 2020. The subject Sarah is most thrilled to have shot is Iris Murdoch.
Lucy Young – a highly versatile London-based photographer specialising in news and features work for national newspapers and magazines, with the bulk of her work commissioned by The Times and the Sunday Times. Her work ranges from capturing breaking events to intimate portraits of the people in the news. Lucy’s work has included the revolution in Libya, the work of Islamic Relief in rural Kenya and images of the Royal family and top political figures in the UK.
Chloe Knott – a freelance sports photographer based in London working across commercial and editorial assignments. After starting out in football with Danehouse Photography, she has worked across a wide range of worlds class events including The Wimbledon Lawn Tennis championships, The Rugby World Cup and Olympic events. Over recent years she has worked primarily under world renowned photographer Bob Martin for clients including The IOC, Sail GP, Manchester City FC and Wimbledon.
Helen Healy – a picture editor with over thirty years experience in the industry. She was the Head of Pictures at the Financial Times for seven years and has also worked at the Guardian, The Times and The Independent. She has seen the newspaper industry move from being a print to a mainly digital product. During her career she has been involved with covering many major news events, including 9/11, the wars in Ukraine and Iraq and Brexit.
Sarah Tilotta – who has worked as a photo editor and photographer for CNN in London since 2016, as part of an award-winning Visuals team covering news, politics, and features worldwide. Her publications as a picture editor and photojournalist have been recognised with Emmy, Webby, and Foreign Press Association awards, among others, on subjects including climate change, LGBTQI+ rights, and migration. Previously she held roles at NOOR Images in Amsterdam, and National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington, DC. She completed an MA in Photojournalism at the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, and a BA in Visual Arts & Photography from Fordham University in New York.

Thanks must go to our fantastic sponsor Sony Pro Imaging, U.K. & Ireland who have enabled us to bring this event to you.

BOOK TICKETS HERE

The BPPA’s Statement on the use of Generative AI by photo agencies

The BPPA’s Statement on the use of Generative AI by photo agencies

The news that Shutterstock’s generative AI platform has been used to create and sell child-abuse content, as reported by Petapixel, will concern everyone.

Images of child abuse have been constructed from datasets built using millions of real photographs, without the consent of the photographers or those in the photographs. Photographers should be wary of lending their work to any agency that might use it in this way.

The BPPA is shocked and disappointed that Shutterstock made this possible. It harms our members when agencies market genuine photojournalism alongside such imagery.

We’ve taken time to consider how this reflects on the work of photojournalists more widely, and the impact this has on our members.

Generative AI images are fiction. Image manipulation of any sort is against The BPPA’s Code. Use of such content by news publishers harms them and their audiences.

Trustworthy photojournalism such as is produced by members of The BPPA every day requires direct documentation of events by skilled photographers working to the highest ethical standards. Anything short of that is dishonest.

Further reading:
https://thebppa.com/artificial-intelligence-press-photography-and-the-bppas-position/

Surrey Police pay out after photographer Peter Macdiarmid brings civil claim for false arrest.

Back in September 2022 The BPPA posted a short piece on our website about the arrest on the 24th of August of multi-award winning photojournalist Peter Macdiarmid whilst covering a Just Stop Oil protest at Clacket Lane Services on the M25, south of London. He was handcuffed and detained for several hours by Surrey Police despite identifying himself as the holder of a UK Press Card.

The post reminded Police Officers that journalists have a right and a duty to report the news. Peter engaged the services of the law firm Bhatt Murphy who sent a letter of claim to Surrey Police. Eventually last December Surrey Constabulary offered to settle out of court, but they are not accepting liability and are refusing to apologise for their actions. The law firm acting on behalf of Surrey Police responded to Peter’s lawyers and denied that any of the Surrey officers did anything wrong, arguing that the situation that they found when they arrived was confusing and that they had acted within the law.

Peter said after the result: “I have been a news photographer for 37 years and have covered many events where tensions were running high and police were under great pressure, this Just Stop Oil protest was not like that – it was very calm and protesters were voluntarily giving themselves up for arrest when a police officer decided to detain me on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage. I was unable to persuade the arresting officer that I was a genuine working press photographer and my press card was ignored. Whilst I am glad to finally bring closure to this after many months, I am disappointed in the actions of Surrey police in handcuffing and arresting me and then dragging out the legal process during my civil claim. Another colleague was arrested in similar circumstances in December 2022 by Hertfordshire police whilst covering a climate protest, but after legal action was started the force very quickly admitted it ‘unlawfully arrested and violated the human rights of a photographer who was held while covering climate protests on the M25’ and the Chief Constable personally rang to apologise to the arrested photographer. The stark contrast between the actions of the two police forces is telling.”

Congratulations to Peter and his solicitors for their perseverance in pursuing this case – Handcuffing and arresting a press photographer is unacceptable behaviour by Surrey Police. We believe that the Police got it wrong on this occasion and that this is far from the first time this happened and it is likely to happen again. In the end Peter has received damages and his costs, but would rather have not had to go through a lengthy and stressful legal process to clear his name.