iWoodmere Art MuseumChestnut Hill
The Photo Review: Best in Show 2026
Prizewinning pictures from The Photo Review's 41st International Photography Competition, juried by Sarah Kennel of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
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The first-prize picture is a landscape in New Mexico, at the spot where an unknown woman's body was found a week after she died. Marcus DeSieno finds these places through autopsy reports and humanitarian groups' data, and shoots them on wet-plate collodion, so the plate marks and lith-print grit cloud the view.
These are the 20 ranked winners of The Photo Review's 41st International Photography Competition, an open call the journal has run since 1985, picked by Sarah Kennel of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. You go from DeSieno's border to a water gun in Clarks Summit, a log loader in Georgia and Coney Island. Ward Roe's Water Gun is dated 2002/2026, which should comfort anyone with a desktop folder called "to edit".
It hangs in the Works on Paper Gallery, third floor of Maguire Hall at 9001 Germantown Avenue. Admission is $15, free for under-18s and students, and free for everyone on Sundays.
Look for
The first prize, by Marcus DeSieno
Look for the border landscape titled for an unknown migrant woman found in New Mexico, shot where her body was recovered, its view clouded by collodion plate marks.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
Skip if
You want one photographer's vision: this is 20 different winners chosen by a single juror.
With kids
Under-18s get in free, and everyone is free on Sundays. The first prize is about migrant deaths on the US border, which its title spells out.
Free in the same building
- Free Interpretation of Plant FormsHarry Bertoia's monumental fountain sculpture, made for Philadelphia's Civic Center in 1967, conserved in public view at Woodmere and now permanently installed on the grounds.
- La Cresta: A Land-Sculpting Installation by Syd Carpenter and Steve DoneganTwo organic mounds built from recycled wood in the hügelkultur tradition, designed to decompose into the soil and feed the ecosystem of Woodmere's grounds.
- Woodmere's Outdoor WonderPublic sculpture set among monumental estate trees, a pollinator garden, bioswale and step pools, where the art sits alongside horticulture and environmental science.
Also at Woodmere Art Museum
On now nearby
Image credits
5
- The Photo Review: Best in Show 2026Courtesy of Woodmere Art Museum
- An Endless Meeting: Still Taking MinutesCourtesy of Vox Populi
- An Endless Meeting: 變 SLOW BURNCourtesy of Vox Populi
- An Endless Meeting: Featuring New Red OrderCourtesy of Vox Populi
- Woodmere Art MuseumStaib, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0