The Quiet Architecture of Defiance: Hoda Afshar and the Politics of Seeing

SOME portraits flatter. Others decorate. A rare few stop you in your tracks, demanding not only to be looked at but to be reckoned with. Untitled #01, the winning work in the 2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize, belongs emphatically to the latter. In it, Hoda Afshar takes the photographic portrait — a form long burdened by conventions of passivity and control — and turns it into an act of resistance.

Set against a pared-back, creased backdrop, the composition centres a gesture chosen by the sitters themselves. Rather than relying on the conventions of direct address, the image substitutes contactless defiance for eye-to-eye appeal — a refusal of the usual pact between subject, camera and viewer. The photograph was made in Far North Queensland in collaboration with the First Nations–led organisations Change the Record and Youth Empowerment Towards Independence (YETI), during a workshop where Afshar invited young people to decide how they wished to be seen.

That collaboration is the work’s ethical axis. Afshar does not impose a pose; she cedes the frame. The result is not a portrait of these young people but one made with them — a shared construction of visibility on their own terms.

The judging panel — writer and broadcaster Benjamin Law, National Portrait Gallery senior curator Serena Bentley, and Art Gallery of South Australia curator Leigh Robb — recognised the force of this exchange:

“By handing agency over to her subjects, Hoda Afshar has given these First Nations young people the rare opportunity to frame themselves on their own terms… these figures observe us in turn, giving an assessment of the nation right now.”

The Weight of the Numbers

The photograph’s political charge becomes even sharper in light of the statistics: First Nations children aged 10 to 17 comprise only 6.6% of their age group in Australia, yet they are 29 times more likely to be imprisoned. In Untitled #01, these numbers are no longer abstract — they are embodied presences, confronting the viewer with a refusal to be rendered invisible.

This is Afshar’s second NPPP win, following her 2015 Portrait of Ali. In the intervening decade, her practice has deepened its engagement with structural injustice and the politics of representation. Projects such as Remain (2018), a searing collaboration with men detained on Manus Island, and Agonistes (2021), which examined the emotional and political toll of activism, have established her as one of Australia’s most uncompromising photographic artists. Code Black/Riot, the series from which Untitled #01 comes, extends this trajectory — each image an incision into the fabric of national self-perception.

Afshar’s use of high, diffuse daylight strips the image of theatrical contrast, leaving expression and gesture as the sole carriers of drama. The backdrop’s visible creases are not incidental; they signal the constructed nature of the scene, making transparent the mechanics of representation.

The 2025 Prize affirms its commitment to range as well as depth. The First Time Finalist Award went to Mother Dreams on a Stone by Sherry Quiambao, an intimate and atmospheric exploration of intergenerational memory. The Art Handlers’ Award was presented to George Fetting for Antonio Initili — Sartoria (Tailor Shop) #1, a richly textured homage to labour and cultural continuity. The People’s Choice Award, worth $10,000, will be announced in October.

The full roster of 48 finalists — selected by Law, Bentley, and Robb — moves between the forensic precision of Basil Abubaker’s 120 Racecourse Road and the painterly lyricism of Bri Hammond’s portrait of activist Sonny Jane Wise, presenting a contemporary portraiture that is expansive, urgent, and unafraid of politics.

Portraiture as Confrontation

Over the past decade, the National Photographic Portrait Prize has shifted away from the polite surfaces of convention toward works that embrace friction, complexity, and dissent. Afshar’s win crystallises that evolution. Untitled #01 does not simply present a subject; it stages a negotiation of visibility, one that resists the comfortable closure of mere representation.

In an age of image saturation, where photographs are consumed and discarded in seconds, this portrait refuses to be passed over. It halts the viewer and demands an exchange — not of pleasantries, but of truths.

The 2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize is on display at the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, from 16 August to 12 October, before touring nationally. Afshar’s portrait will encounter new audiences in new contexts, each viewing an opportunity for recognition, reflection, and, perhaps, the shift that comes when art refuses to behave.

In the end, the most radical gesture here may not be the raised hands themselves, but the act of turning the camera over — of saying: you decide how you are seen.

Exhibition Details
National Photographic Portrait Prize 2025

• Dates: 16 August – 12 October 2025
• Location: National Portrait Gallery, King Edward Terrace, Parkes, Canberra ACT
• Opening Hours: Daily, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
• Admission: Free with general entry

This annual prize exhibition presents 48 finalist portraits before embarking on a national tour to major and regional galleries.

All 48 finalist works — including the winning and awarded portraits — are available to view on the National Portrait Gallery’s website. View them here.