Congratulations to Robert Fielding, winner of this year’s $30,000 acquisitive Bowness Photography Prize, for Sacred earth/Manta Miil miilpa, 2024, a thoughtful and deliberate work of protest that communicates the artist’s intention to practise truth-telling through his image-making.
Of this image, Fielding says, “This work is old and new. Present but secretive. One must look back to move forward, always honouring our land and culture.”

Robert Fielding (Yankunytjatjara (Western Arrente) peoples), Sacred earth / Manta Miil miilpa, 2024, photosensitive emulsion, cotton paper, acrylic paint, 224 x 228cm. Collection of the artist. Courtesy the artist, Mimili Maku Arts (Anangu Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara Land) and Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh), Melbourne
The judging panel, consisting of artist and academic Dr Peta Clancy, former Director of Photographers’ Gallery London Brett Rogers, and MAPh Director Anouska Phizacklea, worked through the submissions to select one winner and three Honourable Mentions, with thanks to Colour Factory.
“This iteration of the exhibition represents diversity, offering multiple perspectives on histories, identities, cultures and approaches to photography,” said Clancy. “With photographic explorations offering unique and respectful viewpoints on childhood, gender, bodies, fertility, sexuality, mortality, trauma, family, migration, connection to place, environmental destruction, colonisation, and the materiality of the medium. Each and every artwork has enabled me to learn a little more about, care for and deepen my respect for each other, the non-human, and the environment.”
The Honourable Mentions were awarded to Kirsten Lyttle for her work Kete whiri awa, 2024, Patrick Pound for his work The waste land, 2024, and Axel Garay for his work Slow way (unfinished business), 2023.
Rogers adds: “The approaches reflected in the work of all four winning artists testify to photography’s endless capacity to question our assumptions and provide imaginative routes for seeing the world anew – Robert Fielding’s blending of old and new techniques, looking both backwards and forwards to honour the land on which his images were created; Kirsten Lyttle’s unique interweaving of her Maori heritage with image-making in her exquisitely crafted hand-made kete (carrying basket) Kete whiri awa; Patrick Pound’s resonant yet witty and profound series The waste land, in which Ebay-sourced images of historical landscapes, scattered with waste from his own studio, are presented in old puzzle boxes; and Axel Garay’s emotionally intense self-portraits which resuscitate a nineteenth-century technique originally employed to exploit Indigenous subjects, thereby reclaiming power.”
The 2024 Bowness Photography Prize finalist exhibition is on view at Museum of Australian Photography (MAPh), Wheelers Hill VIC 3150 until 10 November.