{"id":736639,"date":"2026-07-01T09:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T09:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/736639\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T09:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T09:38:14","slug":"5-emerging-photographers-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/736639\/","title":{"rendered":"5 emerging photographers you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mid-20s are what I\u2019ve come to think of as a scrappy period (I say this as someone squarely in the thick of it. See the Dazed guide to surviving your quarter-life crisis here<\/a>). The careless freedom of adolescence is gone, yet full-and-proper adulthood remains somewhat half-built. You spend these years assembling a self; one flat move, one flatmate, one heartbreak at a time. First jobs fold into identities. The question, \u2018What do you do?\u2019 becomes inescapable, almost the default inquiry at every house party, murmured over bad mixes and even worse mixers.<\/p>\n

However, there is something stubbornly open about this era. There is a rawness to being 20-something in real time, carving out, on your own terms, the life you hope to keep living. It is precisely this precarity that Cold Feet<\/a>, a new exhibition curated by Christina Libri at Southern & Partners in Soho, takes as its subject. Five photographers \u2013 Timon Benson<\/a>, Georgia Jones<\/a>, Hamish McMillan<\/a>, Kendal Walker,<\/a> and Elena Bianca Zagari<\/a> \u2013 all emerging young artists making work in a moment that resists resolution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"TimonImpasse (2025)Photography Timon Benson<\/p>\n

Following a touring solo exhibition last year, Manchester-based photographer Timon Benson<\/a> recently showed as part of New Contemporaries at South London Gallery. For Cold Feet, he presents Impasse (2025), a portrait of his long-time collaborator Liv Jarman, photographed in her bedroom on an extended 1\/4 shutter. Jarman sits at the centre of the bed applying lipstick. Powder-pink sheets and flushed cheeks, a deep rouge lip, half-finished wine. Everything is held in a gorgeously raw, intimate state of becoming. Hailing from Manchester, Benson makes photographs with a \u201csustained immediacy\u201d, sitting, as he puts it, \u201con the edge of choreography but kept in real space\u201d. The logic is deliberate. \u201cThe way people interact with the camera is dramatically different than it was before [\u2026] as soon as the camera comes up, the performance element is there.\u201d Even a private room becomes staged, subtly, almost imperceptible.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your relationship with Dazed?<\/p>\n

Timon Benson: I\u2019ve been in it a couple of times [\u2026] People often don\u2019t think outside of London, but Dazed have always covered Manchester, the North, the scene we have here. It\u2019s always been welcomed.<\/p>\n

What do you want to achieve by 30?\u2028<\/p>\n

Timon Benson: As long as I can sustain making work and continue to engage with it, that’s everything.<\/p>\n

If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be doing?\u2028<\/p>\n

Timon Benson: An audiologist; that\u2019s what my undergraduate degree is in. I quit my job two weeks ago!<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one piece of art you\u2019d like to own?\u2028<\/p>\n

Timon Benson: Montparnasse, Andreas Gursky.<\/p>\n

If you could go for a coffee with any artist, who would it be?<\/p>\n

Timon Benson: Mark Rothko.<\/p>\n

\"Pin<\/a>\"GeorgiaDream Girl, 2026Photography Georgia Jones<\/p>\n

Georgia Jones<\/a>\u2019 first experimented with photography in her early teens at house parties, armed with a disposable camera from Urban Outfitters, the kind with coloured film pre-printed on the negative so the image and the pattern bled together. \u201cThey looked terrible, but I just loved the concept.\u201d It was about \u2018ownership\u2019, she explains, wanting to own a moment, make something and articulate how she sees. Today her images are a far cry from those early Instax Minis, with major editorial credits including Willy Chavarria<\/a> for Dazed and portraits of Marina Abramovi\u0107<\/a> for Saatchi Yates, alongside campaigns for Issey Miyake, Byredo, and Jawara Alleyne. London-born and Paris-based, Jones\u2019 photographs are glossy, light-hearted and deliberately so. \u201cWhenever I shoot, I\u2019m like, \u2018We\u2019re having fun, we\u2019re experimenting, we\u2019re so lucky we get to do this. We may as well play.\u2019\u00a0 That element of play is really important.\u201d For Cold Feet, Jones shows a triptych drawn from three separate shoots, all fun, flirty, and formally assured. Brigit (2026), a wry riff on the classic pin-up, sits somewhere between Mario Testino\u2019s towel series and a John Waters<\/a> fantasy. \u201cI\u2019ve got no idea if I\u2019m going to still be able to do this in ten years; I may as well have fun while I’m doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

What are you looking at for inspiration?<\/p>\n

Georgia Jones: Katherine Hamnett<\/a> slogan T-shirts, and old i-D bylines. Terry Jones is the king of kings<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your relationship with Dazed?<\/p>\n

Georgia Jones: I interned for them when I was 16, doing events and marketing. More recently, Ester, the art director, asked me to shoot Willy Chavarria. I\u2019ve always loved Dazed, the people, the parties, the vibe, everything.<\/p>\n

If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be doing?<\/p>\n

Georgia Jones: A psychologist.<\/p>\n

If you could have a coffee with any artist, who would it be?<\/p>\n

Georgia Jones: Tracy Emin, fuck it. Actually, Sarah Lucas. No, Tracy! She\u2019s the best.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one piece of art you\u2019d like to own?<\/p>\n

Georgia Jones: Oh my God, that’s impossible. Maybe a Joan Jonas video work.<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan, Cold Feet<\/p>\n

Gallery \/ 8 images<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan<\/a> first came to photography working at IDEA<\/a>, where exposure to artists and photographers quietly opened out what felt possible. It was there he learned many of his practical skills, assisting the revered co-founder Angela Hill. McMillan\u2019s own documentary photography has the logic and intimacy of a postcard, snapshots taken on pilgrimage and sent home. They are not tourist holiday pics but rather quieter, personal vignettes. “I\u2019m always excited by uncertainty,\u201d he says. \u201cI go there with no idea what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d Perhaps the methodology is inherited: both parents are radio broadcasters, and there is something of the reporter in his images \u2013 dispatches from on the ground. The work occupies the stillness of Luigi Ghirri and the chance encounter of Martin Parr. For Cold Feet, he shows images from time spent in the States and Mexico, carrying what he describes as \u201ca melancholy and stillness\u201d. He says, \u201cA lot of people are too busy. You\u2019ve walked down that street 150 times. You get to a point where you\u2019re not looking at things. I\u2019m always trying to look at things.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you weren\u2019t a photographer, what would you be doing?<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan: A mountain guide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one piece of art you\u2019d like to own?<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan: This painting by Noah Davis<\/a>, of a lake \u2013 I love the greens and small pops of red.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Describe your practice in three words?<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan: Tranquil, observant, detached.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s one living artist you’d like to go for coffee with?<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan: Lana Del Rey.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your relationship with Dazed?<\/p>\n

Hamish McMillan: I used to get given the magazine by my grandma because she thought that I should work in fashion.<\/p>\n

Elena Bianca Zagari, Cold Feet<\/p>\n

Gallery \/ 5 images<\/p>\n

Elena Bianca Zagari<\/a>\u2019s ongoing series Sex Diaries is built from personal stories by young women, retold and reimagined as a visual diary that moves through \u201cdiscovery, appropriation, and aftermath\u201d. Part documentary, part fiction, the images began when Zagari was 14 in Naples and ends, for now, at 23. She tells Dazed, \u201cEverything I say comes from my personal experience. It has to go through me.\u201d These borrowed, reconstructed intimacies circle one central preoccupation: \u201cThe idea that you can never really return to the same moment twice. With each return, memory changes slightly.\u201d Each iterative display of the series takes a slightly different form, adding another layer to the ongoing work. From sweat-stained bedding to an underwater plug and a topless portrait, there is a palpable warmth and bodily affect to the images. Together, the composite truths build an unfiltered portrait of girlhood. Working across photography, moving image, and text, Zagari has shown at the National Portrait Gallery\u2019s Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and Soho Revue. Sex Diaries remains ongoing. “What\u2019s more Cold Feet than an unfinished project,” she laughs.<\/p>\n

If you could get a coffee\/ pint with any artist, who would it be?<\/p>\n

Elena Bianca Zagari: Probably Nan Goldin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Describe your practice in three words?<\/p>\n

Elena Bianca Zagari: Intense, messy, and long. It doesn\u2019t look like,but it takes a long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one piece of art you\u2019d like to own?<\/p>\n

Elena Bianca Zagari: A Francesca Woodman print<\/p>\n

Outside of art, what gives you inspiration?<\/p>\n

Elena Bianca Zagari: I really like reading Simone de Beauvoir and Kathy Acker. When I read those books, there\u2019s a level of reality in it. It doesn\u2019t feel like anything was hidden, and you\u2019re able to grow with the writer, or experience this process of understanding through someone else\u2019s words. I don\u2019t necessarily remember the specific storyline of each book, but I remember the feeling.<\/p>\n

Kendal Walker, Cold Feet<\/p>\n

Gallery \/ 4 images<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Scrappy\u2019 is the perfect way to describe it,\u201d Kendal Walker<\/a> says of Efron at Joe’s Apartment (2025), a medium-format portrait shot in natural light on display as part of the exhibition. Walker burned the shadows and printed it black and white, as the subject\u2019s bright shorts were a distraction. \u201dI wanted it to just be about her,\u201d she explains. The image shows close friend Efron holding a lock of hair back, chest open. There is something reciprocal in the gaze. The photograph lingers on the fragile exchange between photographer and subject, where looking becomes a form of recognition. Utah-born and based between London and New York, Walker has shot numerous campaigns and recently presented her debut solo show, Tracks, which showed at Manor Place, London, in June.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your relationship to Dazed?<\/p>\n

Kendal Walker: I grew up in Utah, in a small town that didn\u2019t have a lot of access to art spaces or anything like that. Dazed was something I always would order and have at home because it has that accessibility where you can see it from anywhere. I shot for Dazed\u2019s Shadow Issue, and have photographed a few musicians for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s one piece of art you\u2019d like to own?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kendal Walker: Wolfgang Tillmans<\/a>\u2019 The State We\u2019re In, A. It\u2019s all water and so striking.<\/p>\n

Describe your practice in three words?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kendal Walker: I would say… intentional, open, and experimental.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do you hope to achieve by 30?<\/p>\n

Kendal Walker: If I\u2019m still making images with people that I love, I\u2019ll be happy.<\/p>\n

Cold Feet<\/a> is showing a Southern and Partners (46 Lexington Street, W1F 0LP) from 10 July until 1 August 2026. The private View takes place on Thursday 9 July from 6-9pm.<\/p>\n