‘Red bean paste balls’ by Zhonghua Yang (China), Overall Winner, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
A pensive moment during preparations for a feast to celebrate Spring Festival in rural China has captured the top award in Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024.
The image by the annual competition’s overall winner Zhonghua Yang shows a woman in Xiangshan, Zhejiang, carrying a tray laden with steaming dim sum towards a table heaving with lots more of the traditional food.
“This wonderful, perfectly balanced image is full of light, shadow, mystery and poignancy,” says Caroline Kenyon, founder of Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year. “It is clear that a celebratory feast is being prepared. The food is exquisitely made, its circular shapes contrasting with the angularity of the fretwork screens, through which the light pours. Meanwhile, the woman who has made the food, weary, carries in yet another tray. Her role is to labour and to serve, while the guests party and enjoy.”
The selection panel for the competition's 36 categories included food photographer David Loftus, best known for his work with chef Jamie Oliver, and Fiona Shields, head of photography at Guardian News and Media.
Enjoy our selection of the award recipients below – and you can discover an online gallery of all 2024 finalists. Entries for the 2025 competition will open in September 2024.
Winner: ‘It’s raining cake, hallelujah!’ by Ming Tang-Evans and stylist Tarunima Sinha (UK)
Category: Tiptree Cake Award, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “A celebration of cake with My Little Cake Tin’s signature colourful and stylish edible floral decoration.”
Winner: ‘Rice grain threshing’ by Kishore Das (India)
Category: The Philip Harben Award for Food in Action, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “As the sun gracefully descends on the horizon, casting a warm and magical golden glow with an ethereal radiance, a tribal lady engages in the ancient practice of threshing rice grains in the courtyard of her home with rhythmic movements by skillfully tossing the harvested rice into the air.”
Winner: ‘A day in the field’ by Natnattcha Chaturapitamorn (Thailand)
Category: Tenderstem® Bring Home the Harvest, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “At the beginning of the rice farming season, a young farmer carries a rack of rice sprouts across a paddy field in Sakon Nakhon province, Thailand.”
Winner: ‘Fighting to save life’ by Mohammad Reaz Uddin (Bangladesh)
Category: Street Food, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “Every evening, Ayesha makes packets of Hawai mithai candy floss by herself. The next day, at six in the morning, Ayesha and her daughter Hanufa go to different streets in the village and children’s schools and sell the sweets. They earn about 300 taka per day and with this money she maintains her family and business.”
Winner: ‘Pasta mistakes’ by Joe Giacomet and Jacqueline Bond (UK)
Category: MPB Food Film Shorts, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “A stop-frame animation created to illustrate an article titled ‘Pasta love’. It describes the birth and subsequent death of love using tortellini as a symbol of a relationship. Originally created to resemble the goddess of love Venus’s navel, it’s often now just a cheap, ready meal. When we first fall in love we dote upon each other, going to restaurants and eating well. Falling out of love, the food we eat together matches our decline.”
Winner: ‘BLT contemplation’ by Delaney McQuown (USA)
Category: Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “This photograph is part of my ongoing self-portrait project, urging women to find liberation through unidealised self-images. Excessive self-documentation fosters familiarity, enabling women to exist unapologetically in photos. Capturing myself eating a BLT without inhibition felt fitting given the complex relationships women often have with their bodies and food. I’m passionate about women embracing their cameras, leading to liberation and self-love.”
Winner: ‘Care’ by Liu Min (China)
Category: Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year (China) 2024
The story: “In Xifeng District, Qingyang city, Gansu province, I witnessed a heart-warming moment while capturing a wedding. A man was serving food to the elderly man at his side, which was touching.”
Winner: ‘Mangrove fisherman’ by Teo Chin Leong (Singapore)
Category: Food in the Field, Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024
The story: “A Burmese fisherman attempts to make a catch in a mangrove forest. The early morning rays of the sun create a magical atmosphere.”
Winner: ‘Bee’s breakfast’ by William Dewhurst (UK)
Category: Young Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year (12 and under) 2024
The story: “I caught this bee having breakfast on a large sunflower at Bignor Roman Villa in West Sussex, UK. Without bees to pollinate, there would be far less food in the world.”
All images courtesy of Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year 2024.
The Pink Lady® Student Food Photographer of the Year supported by The Royal Photographic Society is featured in the July-September 2024 issue of the RPS Journal.
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