Winners Of The Head On Photo Festival Announced
Image: Head On Phot Fest/Instagram
This year’s Head On portrait festival top three winners and the festival’s top honours were Lívia Peres (Portrait) for The World Burns Gently, Liam Man (Landscape) for Ring of Fire and Ice, and Abdelrahman Alkahlout (Exposure) for Faith Amidst Genocide.
From 8 to 20 November, witness their artwork and many others at Head On Photo festival hubs in Bondi Beach and Paddington—transforming the Sydney suburbs into an art hub lined with photography portraits that exemplify visual storytelling, human resilience, and innovative perspectives.
The 2025 Head On Photo Festival has been around since 2010 as the go-to festival for discovering photographic prodigies and their breathtaking portraits from around the world. This year’s exhibition features over 100 works by artists from more than 20 countries.
Lívia Peres, the Portrait Award winner and a Brazilian photographer based in Basel, Switzerland, showcases ‘The World Burns Gently’. Her work centres on motherhood and the mother–child bond.
Speaking to The Guardian, Peres said, “He kept playing while the air thickened. I stayed quiet, watching him framed between bushes and smoke. It wasn’t the fire that moved me; it was his stillness inside it.”
She continues, “I took the picture without thinking too much. Only later did I realise how often childhood continues, even when the sky shifts.”
Capturing the environment
The Landscape Award winner is Liam Man, a UK Photographer, with his work “Ring of Fire and Ice” that captures “a single photograph that embodies the critical balance between the incredible power of the sun, the health of our glaciers, and the livelihoods that depend on them, as Man mentioned in his IG post.
Collaborating with UNESCO in support of the 2025 United Nations International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, his work is currently showcased alongside Bondi Promenade in the Landscape Awards exhibition.
Finally, the winner of the Exposure Award is Abdelrahman Alkahlout for ‘Faith Amidst Genocide’, an incredible portrait of people practising salah right beside bomb ruins.
Newly introduced this year, the Mayor of Waverley’s Prize for best exhibition was given by Mayor Will Nemesh to Gavin Libotte’s Wanderland, currently on display on the Bondi promenade for the festival’s duration.
Since 2004, The Head On Foundation have showcased 5,000+ photographers in Sydney, across Australia and abroad, awarding more than $800,000 in cash and prizes. Visit here for more information.
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