Portrait of Orthodox Girl in Synagogue Wins International Photography Award

By Maya Benton

Chayla in Shul,” by Laura Pannack, winner of the National Portrait Gallery’s 2014 John Kobal Award. (Courtesy of Laura Pannack)

‘Chayla in Shul’ will be displayed in London’s National Portrait Gallery

This week the National Portrait Gallery in London announced the winners of one of the world’s most prestigious portrait photography awards. Among the usual intimate family portraits, eerie shots of twins, dystopic depictions of urban poverty and suburban malaise, portraits of political officials—including a particularly unsettling close-up of Silvio Berlusconi—and politically engaged photographs of the victims and survivors of war-torn communities, is an image of a young, red-headed Orthodox Jewish girl. The photograph, “Chayla in Shul,” won this year’s John Kobal New Work Award, given each year to a promising photographer under age 30. Laura Pannack, a British photographer and graduate of London’s esteemed Central Saint Martins College of Art, was awarded the £4,000 ($6,250) prize and a prestigious commission to photograph a member of the U.K. film industry for the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection.

Culled from more than 4,000 international submissions by roughly 1,800 photographers, 59 portraits were chosen by the judges to be included in this year’s exhibition, which draws more than 200,000 people to the National Portrait Gallery each year. The show opened Thursday and runs through February 22.

I spoke with Pannick just after the award was announced to learn more about the image that nabbed this year’s prize. Five years ago Pannack, who describes herself as a “cultural Jew,” moved to the Stamford Hill district of North-East London, an area heavily populated by Haredi Jews that has been subject of attacks and media criticism in recent years. Pannack did not know much about the “very closed, very modest community” she encountered when she moved to the neighborhood, and quickly decided she would undertake a photographic project documenting her new neighbors. Unsure how to best approach the project, she spent many months getting to know the families, working in the schools and with the women’s and children’s groups as they slowly invited her into their world. The result is an ongoing series (working title: Purity), documenting the lives and experiences of Jewish women living in Stamford Hill.

The photographer describes Chayla, the 11-year-old subject of her winning photograph, as extremely shy and introverted, very mature and extremely intelligent. Although the majority of the photographs in the Purity series are taken in people’s homes, Chayla is pictured in the women’s section of the synagogue led by her father, an Orthodox rabbi.

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