After receiving more than 30,000 submissions, Kate Middleton and the National Portrait Gallery announced on Monday that they have selected the 100 winning portraits in a nationwide contest to document through photos the effects of COVID-19 on the United Kingdom’s populace. The images in the exhibition, titled Hold Still, display a range of emotions and settings: from virtual birthday parties to dealing with illness and isolation. “I’ve been so overwhelmed by the public’s response to Hold Still,” said the Duchess of Cambridge in a statement. “The quality of the images has been extraordinary, and the poignancy and the stories behind the images have been equally as moving as well.”
Joining the royal on judging duties were Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, as well as writer Lemn Sissay; Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England; and photographer Maryam Wahid. “For me, every single image submitted has a narrative and is a valuable photograph. All of the images taken in this time are evidence of how lifestyle, celebrations, relationships, birth, death, and religious festivities drastically changed during the coronavirus pandemic in Britain,” said Wahid.
Even Queen Elizabeth II gave her nod of approval, in the form of a letter she penned after Middleton shared some of the images with her. “The Duchess of Cambridge and I were inspired to see how the photographs have captured the resilience of the British people at such a challenging time, whether that is through celebrating frontline workers, recognising [sic] community spirit or showing the efforts of individuals supporting those in need,” she wrote. The Duchess also shared the winning photos on the Duke of Cambridge’s and her official Instagram account of @kensingtonroyal.
The portraits are available for viewing on the National Portrait Gallery’s website; visitors can also learn about the stories behind each photo in the words of the photographers themselves. And, depending on the state of the country in the next few months, the Gallery also hopes to show the images in cities across the U.K.
The creation of Hold Still was announced back in May as a way to instill a sense of community among her country’s residents, even in the midst of strict social distancing. The NPG called it an “an ambitious community project to create a unique photographic portrait which captures the spirit, mood, hopes, fears, and feelings of the nation” as it weathers the COVID-19 crisis. Anyone in the U.K. was encouraged to submit a portrait into one of three categories: Helpers and Heroes, Your New Normal, and Acts of Kindness. “By bringing together these individual moments we can create a collective portrait of lockdown reflecting resilience and bravery, humor and sadness, creativity and kindness and tragedy and hope,” reads a statement on the NPG’s website.
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Notably, the submissions did not need to be professional-quality work: As the guidelines noted, “each image will be assessed on the emotion and experience it conveys rather than its photographic quality or technical expertise.” Therefore, even iPhone snaps were acceptable, but every image had to include at least one person.
There may be no royal better suited to the task of judging the photos than Middleton. Not only is she a patron of the NPG, but she also graduated from the University of St. Andrews with a degree in the history of art. “We’ve all seen some incredible images out there and heard some amazing stories,” she previously said in a YouTube clip on the NPG’s website. “I really hope through a project like this we might be able to showcase some of those stories. And to document and share a moment in time I suppose that we’re all experiencing.”
Also, as eagle-eyed royal fans may know, the Duchess of Cambridge is adept behind the camera herself: She often shoots the portraits of her three children that are released to the public. In April, Kensington Palace shared adorable images of her youngest, Prince Louis, covered in rainbow paint in honor of his second birthday. Three years ago, she was even given an honorary lifetime membership to the Royal Photographic Society, in honor of her family portraits as well as the images she has taken while on tour as a royal.
