Ones to Watch 2025 – Tudor Rhys Etchells

Every 12 months, BJP publishes its Ones to Watch subject – our collection of the artists who epitomise the expertise and creativity in worldwide pictures right now, as nominated by a world community of curators, editors, and artists.

As we finalise this 12 months’s checklist, to be revealed in Issue 7926, out this June, we’re revisiting the 2025 Ones to Watch. Today, Tudor Rhys Etchells, as nominated by curator Isaac Blease.

Born in Wales in 1994, Tudor Rhys Etchells is a latest graduate of the documentary pictures MA on the University of South Wales. His photographic follow, nonetheless, is formed by his former profession as an immigration lawyer in Cardiff, navigating and deconstructing the damning forms surrounding citizenship and migration, within the UK and past. 

Etchells describes having to “mediate the reality” of purchasers in his authorized place, establishing narratives of migration by questioning their harrowing experiences. “In my work now it’s about asking the right questions with the camera,” he says, “being aware of the space you hold and how people are going to react to you.” This shift in perspective led him to critically look at the ethics of pictures and illustration – what it means to {photograph} and to be photographed, and the facility dynamics that form these interactions.

Encountering Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s writing additionally led him to query how migrants are depicted within the media. “Contemporary documentary photography of the issues surrounding migration is dominated by the same themes, such as photographs of asylum seekers queuing up for food,” he observes. Visual narratives favour shock issue and dramatic impact over nuance; few give attention to the bureaucratic programs that contribute to migrants’ dehumanisation, a system which Etchells is aware of intimately. “There is a repetitiveness in practising within the legal system,” he explains. “The same addresses, the specific and formal language, the same rights of appeal.”