8 Years of This is Reportage: 2023 – Hollie Mateer’s Reportage Award
Seeing the world differently
Some photographers have a rare ability to make you see the familiar in new ways — to reveal layers of design and meaning hidden within everyday life. Hollie Mateer (UK – TiR Profile / website) is one of those photographers. Her black-and-white Reportage Award from 2023 is a perfect example: a striking, clever composition that transforms a wedding scene into something almost surreal.
In the image, guests stand silhouetted against a brooding sky, while in the foreground, a giant chessboard dominates the frame. Their dark outlines echo the shapes of the chess pieces, as though they themselves are pawns and rooks caught mid-game. It’s a photograph that plays with perception — witty, graphic, and deeply human all at once.
Hollie’s ability to spot this visual parallel, and to frame it with such balance and clarity, is a mark of her artistry. There’s no staging here; just pure awareness — the kind that comes from years of instinctively reading light, space, and gesture.
Why this image defines 2023
This Award came during an extraordinary year for Hollie, who was named Photographer of the Year for the first time in 2023 — a title she would go on to retain the following year, becoming the first and only two-time winner in TiR history.
Her work consistently reminds us that documentary wedding photography can be both observational and artistic — honest yet abstract, emotional yet precise. The “chess” image encapsulates that duality: grounded in reality, but elevated through composition and vision.
It’s the kind of frame that stays with you — not because of what it shows, but because of how it makes you look at the world differently.
