22 Soulful Award-Winning Portraits from the 2025 AAP Magazine Awards

The 2025 AAP Magazine Awards have once again shined a spotlight on the power of portraiture, unveiling 22 soulful and award-winning images that explore the emotional and visual depth of the human condition. This year marks the 48th issue of AAP Magazine, dedicated entirely to portrait photography—a genre that continues to captivate with its ability to reveal the essence of a person in a single frame.

Photo by: Carole Mills Noronha

Selected from a remarkable pool of international submissions, the winning photographers come from diverse backgrounds, yet share a common gift: the ability to connect with their subjects and translate those connections into powerful visual stories. Each portrait stands out not only for its technical excellence but also for its emotional gravity—whether it’s an intimate glance, a quiet moment of reflection, or a boldly constructed conceptual piece.

These portraits go beyond mere representation. They convey vulnerability, dignity, and a deep sense of humanity. The winning entries range from spontaneous, documentary-style captures to meticulously composed studio portraits, showcasing a wide spectrum of creative approaches. Together, they challenge conventions and redefine what a portrait can be in today’s visual culture.

More than just faces, these photographs invite viewers to pause, feel, and reflect. They remind us that at the heart of every great portrait lies a story worth telling—one that transcends borders, cultures, and time.

This curated collection is not just a celebration of portraiture—it’s a celebration of people, emotions, and the unseen threads that connect us all.

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#1. 1st Place Winner: "That Place He Goes" by Carole Mills Noronha (Australia)

"This series, That Place he Goes, was born out of a need to capture moments of my dear father’s life. For dad, my photography delivered concrete evidence his day-to-day that his mind had already wiped. For me it was about holding on to every piece of dad, somehow keeping him with me as his Dementia and Alzheimer’s slowly took him. Most of this series was taken in the last four years of my beautiful dad’s life. Most of it in the same room, in between strict Covid lockdowns in Aged care, Melbourne. A raw, honest and loving devotion to my dad, Harold Mills (1932-2022)."

#2. 2nd Place Winner: "Retaguardia" by Jesús Umbría Brito (Spain)

"Retaguardia is a photographic project that dwells in the edges of mass society, in the periphery of the normative, in its penumbra. Far removed from dogma and convention, it unfolds a portrait of post-pandemic youth identified with the counterculture surrounding punk music and aesthetics: a mosaic of faces and expressions that seek each other in the mirror of the past to shape their present. From there, the author weaves a dialogue between times and generations."

#3. 3rd Place Winner: "Wet Plate Collodion Portraits" by Paul Adams (United States)

This portrait is an original Ultra Large Format 20×24” Wet Plate Collodion Tintype. All the images from this series are original wet plate collodion tintypes. Some images are printed as photogravure intaglio prints from the original tintype plate.