By the time I had rounded what was the final corner, unexpected anguish had peaked into tears.

I had to sit. I cried in the very place I sought joy.

My nation was depicted on the walls, but I was a foreigner.

And so it was that I experienced the 2025 National Photographic Portrait Prize in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, ahead of its current 15-month national tour.

The website for the photographic prize promised an exhibition that ‘celebrates the vitality and diversity of photographic portraiture in Australia’.

But what it delivered was, in my opinion, a DEI honour role. An image couldn’t just be, it had to be something, a public declaration of allegiance.

One way or another, photo after photo, the bulk of images related to themes of victimhood, identity, ethnicity, Aboriginality, sexuality, or gender. On my count, 75 per cent or 36 of the 48 images, were of this ilk.

The winning picture was typical: it depicted three Indigenous girls staging ways to cover their faces. It intended to ‘interrogate’ the story of a regional Queensland town where law enforcers run ‘a system that targets and imprisons them from the age of 10’. The girls had learned to avoid being caught on security camera. Or so the caption said.

Welcome to Australia. Welcome to the best photographic portrait of the year.

The Hangers prize, was instead, a pearl of an image: balanced, beautiful, rich in storytelling and texture – a picture of an aging Italian tailor in his shop in Sydney surrounded by the tools of his craft.

Any Anglo images represented a stereotyped Australiana, a celebration of kitsch: for instance, a slightly chubby, mullet-headed farm kid standing in a paddock.

Despite thousands of entries, the average Australian was almost invisible. Middle Australia was absent. My freckle-faced Australia was not on those walls.

Of course, this is not to argue that some of the DEI images should not have been there. But how can a national prize be so removed from the breadth of the nation? With 14 of 48 images, it could have been an excellent national Indigenous art award or with 12 images, a trans/queer award.

Portraits of immense beauty could be found elsewhere in the gallery: a superb portrait of Lowitja O’Donoghue hung among others in the main walkway. Emerging from the next room were impossibly beautiful images of Tina Arena, celebrating her decades of success in the music industry.

And Michael Zavros’s portrait of former Governor General, Dame Quentin Bryce, was drop-dead gorgeous.

On the walk back to the hotel – I found myself looking at the faces passing by.

There was a gentleman, slightly hunched, face worn into deep crevices and a ruddy, bulbous nose. He might have been homeless, or not. It was a face that showed a weathered life, each deep line a tour of intrigue.

Or another: a beautiful, giggling, Japanese girl clutching her boyfriend’s arm: almond eyes, black lashes, fine boned, smiling. Beautiful. Natural. Photogenic. An Australian story.

These weren’t the faces on the walls of the gallery. But they could have been.

Hence the elation when I read in The Australian about the launch of a new $100,000 art prize by Brisbane philanthropists Zuzanna Kamusinski and Jake Phillpot.

They want the Banksia Prize to celebrate ‘the beauty of Australian life’. They argue it will act as a counter to other awards because, as the story said, ‘they believe there is a disconnect between Australia’s high living standards, physical beauty and multicultural harmony and how the nation is often represented in prize-winning art’.

Amen to that.

They said:

‘Australians enjoy one of the best qualities of life in the world, but you wouldn’t know it from the winning entries in our top art prizes.’ And more: ‘Many of today’s prestigious awards and exhibitions no longer reflect the values and culture of everyday Australians.’

‘Instead, they increasingly favour works and artists that fit a particular social and political narrative.’

Their words made me think about the National Photographic Portrait Prize or maybe the Archibald. These days some portraits better resemble Miss Piggy after a big whiz in a kitchen blender.

Stunning works such as Johannes Leak’s image of Australian Jewish leader Alex Ryvkin failed to make the 2025 Archibald cut. Ryvkin is a man of intellect, grace, strength and poise. Leak’s work captured it all, including the anxiety in Ryvkin’s eyes.

Perhaps Leak may consider the Banksia Award in 2026. His work declares a penchant for merit, craft, and beauty.

Judges for the Banksia won’t know who has created the work and they will assess ‘beauty in composition, beauty in craftmanship and the work that evokes the strongest sense of pride in being Australian’.

And alleluia to that.

It is refreshing that some people – and probably most – still believe that art can celebrate beauty and not just the awkward, or weird or off-beat.

One hopes the Banksia delivers on canvas a nation flushed by the fresh breeze of a modern, capable, energetic, wholesome and clever people.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

So too is art.