Five Aesthetica Art Prize Longlisted Artists Explore Abstraction Through Photography

Five artists longlisted for the Aesthetica Art Prize are creating abstract photography by manipulating perception through techniques like cropping, close-ups, and digital manipulation. London-based photographer David Parfitt's 2024 work "Colour Correction" highlights everyday objects' subtle patterns using light and composition, alongside his commercial collaborations with Dior, Estée Lauder, and Condé Nast. Jean Paul Soujol Benedetti's 2023 series "Minimalism and Conceptualism" employs blue tones and horizon motifs to explore timelessness and infinity. Paris-based French artist Tommy Goguely's 2024 piece "DG-RM/013" investigates digital image materiality and photography's historical transition. Vietnam-born, Madrid-based artist Viet Ha Tran, the first foreign Board Member of Spain's Royal Photographic Society in 125 years, focuses on landscapes and sustainability in her ongoing 2024- series "Colours of the rain," with past collaborations including Amazon, Louis Vuitton, and Samsung. David Pereira's 2024 cameraless series "Colour Correspondence" uses a custom machine-learning model to generate light on photosensitive paper, embracing chance in his London-based practice. These artists follow a tradition expanded by 20th-century practitioners like Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Barbara Kasten. The Aesthetica Art Prize submission deadline is 31 August 2026.