The National Photography Prize offers an acquisitive $40,000 Audray Banfield Award, the $5000 John and Margaret Baker Memorial Fellowship for an emerging practitioner, and further supports a number of artists through focused acquisitions.
Winner The 2026 National Photography Prize ($40,000)
Paul Knight lives and works on Darkinjung Country in Ettalong Beach, NSW. His practice explores intimacy, gentleness, and the social structures that shape closeness. His photographic practice considers the image as a container for experience and examines how loving bonds are formed and expressed.
Knight’s ongoing series Chamber Music documents the domestic life he shares with his partner Peter. Through portraiture and still life, Knight’s prints balance intention and chance and create a sustained meditation on intimacy as a counterpoint to power and hierarchy. The work reflects on how relationships are shaped and communicated through everyday life.
The 2026 National Photography Prize finalists include leading Australian artists Alana Hunt, Alex Walker, Amalia Lindo, Arlo Mountford, David Stephenson, JD Reforma, Lisa Stonham, Marian Tubbs, Morgan Hogg, Nathanael Edwards, Paul Knight, and Sarah Rhodes.
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