Gallery: 100 best lockdown portraits revealed from Duchess of Cambridge’s Hold Still project

Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, and the UK’s National Portrait Gallery have put together a digital exhibition of the 100 best portraits taken during the lockdown and submitted to the Hold Still photographic contest. The images, centered around the themes of Helpers and Heroes, Your New Normal and Acts of Kindness, will become a print exhibition later in the year and will tour the UK.

Set up to document aspects of life in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland during the global coronavirus pandemic, the Hold Still project was launched by the Duchess, a keen photographer herself, in May and was open for entries for six weeks.

Organizers say they received 31,598 entries which were judged by the Duchess alongside the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, a poet, a photographer and the Chief Nursing Officer for England. The judges said they selected the winning images based on the ‘emotions and experiences they convey rather than on their photographic quality or technical expertise’.

We've rounded up ten of the 100 images in the following gallery, but for more information and to see all 100 portraits visit the National Portrait Gallery website.

Press release

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