Kitchen gods and Chinese opera: views from the diaspora
The British Journal of Photography, in partnership with WePresent and Galerie Huit Arles, has announced the winners of OpenWalls Spotlight 2025. The international photography award champions both emerging and established photographers by exhibiting their work in the historic setting of Galerie Huit Arles alongside the prestigious Les Rencontres d'Arles photography festival. Work can be seen at Galerie Huit Arles from 7 July 2025
This year's theme, Traditions in Transition, invited photographers to consider how cultural rituals, identities and heritage evolve across time, place and generations. Judges picked a series winner and four single image winners
The 2025 series winner is Anh Nguyen, for Kitchen God – a vivid, staged exploration of Vietnamese identity in diaspora. Drawing from the belief in omniscient kitchen gods who observe and report on domestic life, Nguyen reimagines these figures within the homes of Vietnamese youth living in New York City. Through stylised imagery and symbolic use of food, space and ritual, the series invites viewers to reflect on what it means to maintain – or reinvent – tradition in new cultural environments
Nguyen: 'In Vietnamese popular mythology, every family is said to have three kitchen gods in their house. Their altars are placed by the stove to watch over the family, ensuring they treat each other well and that all matters of the home are in order'
'Growing up in Vietnam but having lived away from home and family for a decade, I began unpacking traditions and rituals I grew up with as performance to find ways to interpret them in my own life'
'Fifty years after the beginning of large-scale migration from Vietnam to the US, the immigrant experience of Vietnamese people of my generation is reshaping the narrative around our identity in America. By deciding what aspects of our culture to preserve and make our own, we serve as a living connection between cultures'
'The Kitchen God series uses the imaginative landscape of Vietnamese myths to explore the meaning of home-making to young Vietnamese people in New York City. What would a kitchen god see if they could look into our lives?'
Dalia Al-Dujaili, British Journal of Photography's online editor and OpenWalls Spotlight 2025 judge: 'All the winning works are a testament to how migration and the diaspora shape emerging culture and subculture. Though we might lose old traditions when we move or evolve, we also gain something in return – we create new identities, we forge the unseen'
Pandey: 'Bonita's story is a powerful and multi-layered one, deeply intertwined with personal, familial, and societal dynamics. Growing up in a village like Pali in Rajasthan, where rigid class, caste and veil systems prevail, her journey of gender transition becomes not just about individual identity but also about challenging foundations of deeply patriarchal societies, longstanding traditions and cultural norms'
An image that documents New York City Chinese opera troupes in Manhattan's Chinatown. This project follows middle-aged and elderly performers – some professional from China and others amateur – who preserve this art form's tradition in the US as a centrepiece of their own identity
Benson: 'This is a reflection of my father's arrival in the UK in 1990. He proudly wore my grandfather's suit, a privilege granted to the first generation of our family to leave Africa. Thirty-four years on, he wears the tie, days after making the decision to return back to a happier life at home. Homing in on my father's experience as a first-generation immigrant in the UK, the project is an ongoing documentation of his present life, a witness between two homes – Kenya and the UK'
Kurunis: 'Greek Orthodox Easter Friday in the remote village of Olympos, Karpathos. Women of all ages adorn an epitaph with fresh flowers, in an ode to those from the community who have passed away that year. This is one of many cherished unique customs of the village, which persist even despite a gradual decline in the local population'
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