National portrait prize for college old boy Stewart

David Stewart won the £12,000 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2015 for a group portrait of his daughter and her friends – a re-staging of a photograph he took seven years ago when they were about to start their GCSEs. Five Girls 2014 shows the women sitting at a desk wearing different coloured sweaters with coffee cups in front of them, and they are all looking in different directions.

The photograph he took seven years ago was displayed in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2008.

This year is the 16th time Stewart has had a photograph selected for the annual exhibition.

Stewart, a former Blackpool and The Fylde College student now living in London, said: “I have always had a fascination with the way people interact – or, in this case, fail to interact, which inspired the photograph of this group of girls. While the girls are physically very close and their style and clothing highlight their membership of the same peer group, there is an element of distance between them.”

Stewart began his career photographing punk bands such as The Clash and The Ramones. After graduating at Blackpool and The Fylde College, he moved to London in 1981 and now works on a mix of personal projects and commissions.