Judges
We are honoured to have four eminent creatives judge this competition
Kolbassia Haoussou MBE
Kolbassia Haoussou (MBE) serves as the head of Freedom from Torture's Survivor Empowerment Directorate, playing a pivotal role in fostering a culture of survivor activism and ensuring the centralization of survivors in all facets of the organization. Beyond his leadership role, Kolbassia is a passionate photographer and filmmaker, actively sharing his expertise through his YouTube Channel dedicated to teaching photography and camera use. His commitment to empowering others to unlock their potential adds both depth and breadth to the judging panel, reflecting his remarkable dedication to political activism.
Aisha Olamide Seriki
Aisha Olamide Seriki (b. 1998) is a Nigerian-British lens-based multidisciplinary artist specialising in fine art photography, printmaking, and sculpture. Her process-led practice explores the photograph as a haptic object, resisting the notion of photography as a purely visual medium. Seriki utilises culturally specific materials such as bronze, brass, iroko, and sapele, combining them with analogue and alternative photographic processes, metal fabrication, and wood carving to assemble layered photo-sculptural objects that physically manifest her worldview.
Her work visualises the dynamic balance that emerges when contradictory forces intersect. Symbolism, spiritualism, and cosmological systems such as Ifa inform Seriki’s multisensory approach to creation. She uses the historical past as a method of contextualising contemporary existence, investigating how cultural memory is embedded within and activated by objects. Her embodied practice subverts formal photographic traditions, questioning the camera’s historical association with truth and objectivity. Through optical interventions and visual manipulation, Seriki challenges rigid imaginations of the self, creating space within the archive for an expanded definition of being.
Aisha was awarded the Sanctuary Scholarship in 2017 and graduated with a first-class honours degree in Global Liberal Arts from SOAS University of London in 2020. In 2021, she was a finalist for the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. In 2023, she was awarded the Frank Bowling Scholarship and completed the Photography MA at the Royal College of Art. The following year, she earned her MFA in Fine Arts and Humanities. Aisha’s project Orí Inú received the RCA’s New Photography Prize, the SW Darkroom Award, and the inaugural JM Finn Graduate Artist Award (2023). In May 2024, she won the V&A Parasol Foundation Prize for Women in Photography. By April 2025, Aisha had been selected for the RCA BLK x G.A.S residency at the G.A.S Foundation, Lagos, Nigeria. In 2026, she will complete the Mentorship Artist Residency at the Indigo Arts Alliance, Maine, Portland.
Inga Marchuk
Inga Marchuk is a Ukrainian photographer based in London since 2022. She studied Graphic Design and Fine Art at Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts, where she cultivated a deep appreciation for visual storytelling. Since beginning her professional journey in 2008, photography has remained both her vocation and lifelong passion — a path that began at the age of ten, with a small film camera and a sense of wonder.
Inga’s work bridges commissioned photography and independent artistic exploration. Her creative process is driven by curiosity — an urge to observe, reflect, and document the subtleties of life. She is drawn to human stories, their interactions, nature, places, memory, and abstract forms. Through continual exploration and collaboration with other artists, Inga seeks to uncover the senses and emotions that quietly shape our lives and evoke a gentle resonance in the viewer.
She is inspired by the diversity of the world and the infinite uniqueness of each moment. “The moment that aspires to infinity, and the beauty that is never the same — these are the most exciting things about creating photographs,” she says.
Lee Williams
​Lee Williams is the creator and owner of Rapid Eye, a cornerstone of the East London photography scene. Originally from Wales, Lee moved to London and transformed a passionate curiosity for the medium into a thriving community institution. With the help of a small grant from the Prince's Trust, he established Rapid Eye in Shoreditch, which has since become a premier destination for film processing, professional darkrooms, and high-end photographic services.
Beyond the darkroom, Lee is a champion of "third spaces"—environments that foster creative connection. This vision led him to co-found the Photobook Café with his wife Sebi, a beloved local hangout that combines a love for tactile imagery with a space for photographers and enthusiasts to gather. Known as a mentor and a quiet force behind the scenes, Lee has spent decades supporting everyone from industry legends in fashion and advertising to emerging students, keeping the art of analogue photography alive and accessible in a digital age.
