All About Photo Awards 2026 winners

The All About Photo Awards have announced the winners of their 2026 edition, The Mind’s Eye. American photojournalist, Matt McClain, took first place with a dreamy portrait of an intern working in a historic millinery shop. This year marks the competition’s 11th anniversary, with legendary photographer Steve McCurry serving as juror.

The All About Photo Awards were founded in 2015 and are open to photographers of all levels and genres. The competition takes its name from a Henri Cartier-Bresson quote about the alignment of head, eye, and heart in photography.

Matt’s winning image, Window to the Past, was taken in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, as part of a larger series on Thomas Jefferson. Shot through a misted window using a Nikon Z9, the condensation on the glass looks as if it blurs the line between past and present. Matt McClain is a former staff photographer at The Washington Post and part of the team that received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2022.

More than 500 photographers from around the world submitted work, and the final selection of 45 images represents 15 countries across four continents. I’m happy to see that three of the top five winners are women.

Runner-Ups

Second place went to Brooke Shaden from the USA for Obscura, a conceptual self-portrait that questions how we curate and share our identities online. Shaden has been working in self-portraiture for seventeen years, and I must say – it shows. This photo caught my eye the moment I opened the batch of winning and shortlisted images.

Third place went to France Leclerc of USA/Canada for Celestial Ladies, taken near the Benin/Togo border. France spotted a group of women from the Celestial Church resting against a gray wall painted with white circles, their white hats creating an unexpected visual echo. It takes an artist’s eye to notice this, and also certainly to capture it this well.

Fourth place went to Javier Arcenillas from Spain for an untitled image from his Tunisia project. It shows a woman sleeping peacefully on a train traveling from Carthage to Tunis, light and color converging around her. Javier describes it as a spontaneous moment stolen from time, and I find it to be such an accurate description. His work has previously appeared in Time, Der Spiegel, and World Press Photo.

Fifth place went to Beamie Young from the USA for Bringing Home the Birds, a black-and-white shot from Havana, Cuba. Two boys walk home carrying handmade cages with small songbirds inside. The photographer explains that keeping caged birds is a long-standing tradition in Cuba, dating back to Spanish colonial times. Sadly, the way it’s done nowadays is not always legal or ethical, but I’ll leave that story for another day.

Beyond the top five, the Merit Award Gallery features work from photographers across Austria, Finland, Italy, Japan, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, the UK, France, China, Czech Republic, and Spain, among others. Subjects are heavily versatile, but what they all have in common is that the photographers captured them absolutely wonderfully.

The 2026 winners receive a share of $5,000 in cash prizes, along with international exposure through AAP Magazine, online exhibitions, and global media coverage.

Take a look at some more images from this year’s contest, and see the full list of winners and the complete gallery on the All About Photo website.

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