2026 Judges

Monica Allende 

Independent Curator and Photography Consultant, Chair of the Jury

Monica Allende is a curator, creative director, consultant, and educator with a distinguished international career in contemporary photography and visual storytelling. She is the Creative Director of The Blue Skies Project, a multidisciplinary collaboration with artist Anton Kusters currently on display at the V&A. Allende is also curating the annual Sony World Photography Awards exhibition at Somerset House and is working as Creative Director with Laia Abril on a new project exploring women political prisoners. Previously, she was the Photo Editor at The Sunday Times Magazine, where she launched Spectrum, its award-winning photography section. A passionate advocate for emerging and established visual storytellers, Allende regularly serves as a juror for international awards and artists’ residencies. She advises on curatorial practices and currently sits on the Boards of Trustees and advisory boards of The Photographers’ Gallery (London) and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.

Image by Mauricio Holc

Daniel Brena 

Director, Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (Mexico)

Daniel Brena is a curator and director based in Oaxaca, Mexico. He leads the Centro de las Artes de San Agustín (CaSa) and previously directed the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo. His work explores the intersection of public space and local culture, with several publications on the visual and narrative identity of Oaxaca. He is currently preparing an exhibition on the use of X-rays in Mexican photography. A nominator for the Prix Pictet and juror for various awards, he has also taught cultural management at La Salle University.

Yumi Goto 

Independent Curator, Editor, Researcher and Publisher (Japan)

Yumi Goto is an independent curator, editor, researcher, and publisher based in Japan. She works extensively with emerging and established photographers, collaborating on long-term documentary projects that explore storytelling through photography, with particular attention to conflict, human rights, and questions of gender and social justice. Her practice spans curation, photobook editing and publishing, as well as education, mentorship, and consulting. She has served as a juror, nominator, and reviewer for numerous international photography awards and festivals. She co-founded the Reminders Photography Stronghold (RPS) in Tokyo, a space dedicated to nurturing photographic authorship and visual literacy through exhibitions, workshops, mentorship, and publishing. As an extension of this practice, she also established RPS Kyoto Paperoles, a space for artistic production and critical dialogue.

Zack Hatfield

Managing Editor, Aperture magazine (USA)

Zack Hatfield is the managing editor of Aperture magazine. He worked previously as a senior editor of Artforum. His writing has appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, 4Columns, the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and the New York Review of Architecture, and as a freelancer he has worked on various museum catalogues, artist projects, and books. Since joining Aperture in 2024, he has regularly contributed reviews to the magazine, and in 2025 he juried Aperture’s Portfolio Prize. He lives in Brooklyn.

Paul Ninson 

Founder and Executive Director, Dikan Center (Ghana)

Paul Ninson is a founder, executive director, scholar, and curator. He is the visionary behind Africa’s largest photography library, housed within the Dikan Center in Accra, Ghana. Founded in 2022, Dikan is a pioneering non-profit dedicated to shaping the next generation of Africa’s creative leaders through exhibitions, international internships, and the Photojournalism and Documentary Practice Program, where Paul also serves as an instructor. Paul studied Industrial Art at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and was later awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Documentary Practice and Visual Journalism program at the International Center of Photography in New York. While in New York, he collected over 20,000 photography books, forming the basis of Dikan’s library. He has worked with global organizations, including Humans of New York where he served as a producer and photo editor, and is a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bindi Vora 

Artist and Senior Curator, Autograph (UK)

Bindi Vora is an interdisciplinary artist of Kenyan Indian heritage and senior curator at Autograph, London. She is interested in how ideas of resistance and resilience are shaped by our surroundings, personal histories and lived experiences. She has curated a number of exhibitions, most recently I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies and Eileen Perrier: A Thousand Small Stories. Her writing has appeared in Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945 (Thames & Hudson) and Tate Dialogues: The 80s: Photographing Britain (Tate) amongst others. Vora is part of the working group ‘Climate and Colonialism’ at The Paul Mellon Centre and Autograph; and sits on the Arts Advisory Committee at Imperial Health Charity. Her works have been exhibited widely and are in public collections including the Government Art Collection, The Hepworth Wakefield, Imperial Health Charity and National Museums NI. She was artist-in-residence at National Museum Northern Ireland as part of the 20/20 programme led by the UAL Decolonising Arts Institute.

Image courtesy of Zöe Maxwell

Ruby Rees-Sheridan 

Assistant Curator, Photography, National Portrait Gallery (UK)

Ruby Rees-Sheridan is Assistant Curator of Photography at the National Portrait Gallery, London, where she works on acquisitions, collection displays and exhibitions, including the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize 2024 and 2025. As Curatorial Coordinator at Four Corners Gallery since 2017, she has championed emerging photographers while exploring radical and alternative histories of the medium. Recent exhibitions include Daniel Meadows: Shuttles, Steam and Soot (2025), Working Lives (2024), Photography on the Move: The Half Moon Touring Shows 1976–84 (2023) and Photographing Protest: Resistance Through a Feminist Lens (2022). Alongside, she has produced exhibitions for festivals across the UK, and writes on photography.

Tess Raimbeau 

Photo Editor, Libération (France)

Tess Raimbeau started working as a Photo Editor at Libération in 2015 and is now responsible for the international pages. After studying political science and journalism, she started working at the prestigious photography magazine 6Mois, before spending a year as Editorial Manager at Agence Myop. She is committed to promoting documentary photography and renewing the aesthetic of Libération, launching major reports abroad and diversifying the roster of reporters working for the newspaper. She closely follows contemporary trends in image-making and regularly sits on juries. In keeping with the new generation, she uses social media on a daily basis in her work, both to discover new visions and to share behind-the-scenes insights into her role as a photo editor. Born in Paris in 1989, Tess is a French-American dual citizen.

Image by Martin Colombet