Female in Focus award explores strength, migration, miscarriage and belonging

The winners of Female in Focus 2022 from British Journal Photography and 1854 have just been announced. Now in its fourth year, the award highlights the work of exceptional female photographers all over the world and this year's submissions were based on the concept of home. 

Female in Focus is “a celebration of women in photography” but it also aims to address the issues of gender inequality in the photography community. Research shows that although 70-80% of photography students are women they only account for 13-15% of professional photographers and this is something Female in Focus hopes to change.

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This year's Female in Focus winners explore themes of gender, miscarriage, survival against all odds, dementia and divorce. From Gala Semenova’s portrait capturing the unbreakable bond between mother and daughter to Marie Smith’s series of self-portraits examining her identity, nature and climate change within her South London surroundings. This year's entries differ as much in style as they do in metaphor and cover an extraordinary range of subject matter. 

Italian documentary photographer Valentina Fusco and social documentary and portrait photographer Lina Geoushy were selected as this year's series category winners. Fusco explores immigration and emigration through a series of triptychs, collages and self-portraits that depict the sea as a place of unity between nations.

She explains in the supporting words, “Documenting this passage was useful to me in order to expand the meaning of migration as a social fact that does not only concern the person who decides to undertake the journey, but extends to the whole community and affects it profoundly.”

Geoushy’s deeply personal project, titled, Shame Less: A Protest Against Sexual Violence was a reaction to the #MeToo which took place in Cairo in June 2020. She called out to women on Instagram who had been the victim of sexual violence in Cairo and began creating portraits layered with the women’s handwriting. Using gold, sh she masked the identity of those that requested it and out of the 10 portraits submitted, just two revealed their identity. 

The winning images from both the single image and series category will be part of an exhibition taking place at Photofusion, London in October and a US exhibition in 2023. To see the full gallery, head to the Female in Focus Winners 2022 page or scroll below to see a selection of our favorite.