Clare Grafik selects
Polly Braden, United Kingdom, for her series "Great Interactions: Life With Learning Disabilities and Autism"

Polly Braden’s long-term documentary project “Great Interactions” offers a rich, empathic and visually accomplished response to the experiences of people with learning disabilities and autism. The quiet intimacy of the images, and their accompanying captions, describe experiences from the everyday as well as once-in-a-lifetime interactions and accomplishments — all without recourse to cliché or assumption.

Jim Casper selects
Roderick McNicol, Australia, for his series "A Portrait Revisited: 1986, 2006"

These diptych portraits of the same person, same pose, 20 years apart, evoke some of the “magic” that is at the essence of photography and portraiture. The concept is simple, but the execution is flawless. So, we as viewers are able to instantly imagine and celebrate the lives of these “artists, writers, junkies and the like” as they age with grace and dignity and beatific beauty over a period of two decades of creative life.

Iatã Cannabrava selects
Michaela Spurna, Czech Republic, for her series "SHE"

At first glance, Michaela Spurna’s work “She” looks like something the author staged using her own family in a photographic theatre. But if you pay more attention, things become enigmatic and mystery fills the air. It's that kind of “invisible” mystery that only photographers can catch. Upon a third look, weirdness is then what draws our attention. The child entranced by lions’ love-making; with her father’s sweat; the almost supernatural scene when the girl is hung from a hook. David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock are echoed—but in the final, definitive look, it is the pure vision of a banal world that we find. Vision elevated to its highest potency.

Lauren Ford selects
Jouk Oosterhof, Netherlands, for her photo "André on His Couch"

There were many elements about this image that caught my eye: the soft colours, the furnishings creating lines almost reminiscent of an 18th-century painting and, of course, the subject himself, André. His stance, relaxed and natural. Sitting in women's clothing but perfectly himself. Somehow, it feels more real than if he were wearing men's clothes. There is a fresh sensitivity here, for me. The way Jouk has captured André is perfect; simple, serene and elegant.

Emma Bowkett selects
Sander Troelstra, Netherlands, for his photo "Niels Blenderman"

Sander Troelstra's portrait of the visual artist Niels Blenderman is both tender and awkward. It speaks well to the relationship between photographer and sitter.

Elinor Carucci selects
Osie Greenway, Germany, for his photo "Kirkuk’s Unkown"

I saw many images in the LensCulture Portrait Awards but I just couldn't stop thinking about this image...it haunted me and still does. This unusual and powerful image triggered a mixture of feelings, thoughts and fears about the world we live in. Yet in the end, I came back to the affirmation that we are all humans. As terrible as this picture appears, I found it beautiful, dangerously quiet, somehow intimate and even poetic in its own, horrifying way.

Anne Bourgeois-Vignon selects
Hannah Modigh, Sweden, for her series "Hurricane Season"

Chronicling the streets of New Orleans, Swedish photographer Hannah Modigh captures the rawness of the city's deprived areas in sloping shafts of sunlight: both ethereal and powerfully real, her images are distinctly beautiful and bold, yet the series is nuanced and full of suggested narratives. Each illuminated scene gives both an insight into the city's current state and into this emerging photographer's alluring aesthetic—a striking combination which I look forward to seeing evolving as her practice continues.

Alessia Glaviano selects
Barbara Peacock, United States, for her photo "Hometown: 1982-2015"

I think about how precisely I remember certain photographs of my childhood, how they are set in my memory and how, like keys, I simply need to recall them to my mind to access different chapters of my life. The way I visualize the images on Instagram is different: they are not objects in themselves but rather a liquid, dissolved in the constant flow of visual information. Still, I think it is important that photography does not lose its memory function altogether. We need to value and hold on to some images from the past, from a time when photographs preserved a closer correspondence to their source in the real world.