In the first picture, the girls are about to start their GCSEs and are surrounded by fast food and fizzy drinks. In the second, they have just graduated from university and have moved on to coffee, salads and sushi.
The latter image, Five Girls 2014, was named winner of the 2015 Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize on Tuesday evening. It is the work of London-based photographer David Stewart, who entered the first image of his daughter and four friends in 2008 and restaged it last year.
Stewart said: “I have always had a fascination with the way people interact - or, in this case, fail to interact, which inspired the photograph of this group of girls. While the girls are physically very close and their style and clothing highlight their membership of the same peer group, there is an element of distance between them.”
His entry this year is the 16th time Lancaster-born Stewart – who began his career photographing punk bands including the Ramones and the Clash – has had a photograph selected for the annual exhibition.
He was given the award, which comes with a prize of £12,000, at a ceremony at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Second prize went to Anoush Abrar for a photograph of a baby boy inspired by Caravaggio’s Sleeping Cupid; third went to Peter Zelewski for a striking portrait of a woman he spotted on Oxford Street in London; and fourth was Ivor Prickett for a photograph of a displaced Iraqi family. The £5,000 John Kobal new work award went to Tereza Cervenova for a portrait of her friend Yngvild.
The prize, which began in 1993, attracted 4,929 submissions from 2,201 photographers from 70 countries. Nicholas Cullinan, director of the NPG, said: “I would like to thank the thousands of photographers who entered such a variety of impressive prints from across the globe, enabling the judges to form this compelling exhibition which is, essentially, a dynamic photographic portrait of the world today.”
• The Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize will be at the National Portrait Gallery in London from 12 November to 21 February.
