Jo Kearney wins World Food Photography Awards with Tajikistan image

A woman lifting tea in a Soviet-era sanatorium was enough to win Jo Kearney the top prize at the World Food Photography Awards, a £5,000 image that felt more like social history than food styling.

Kearney’s photograph, A Woman Eats in the Canteen of the Soviet-era Sanatorium, first won the Fortnum & Mason Food at the Table category before taking the overall title. The image was made at Khoja Obi Garm sanatorium in the mountains of Tajikistan, a large concrete complex built around radon-rich hot springs and one of the few sanatoria still operating in the region. Guests there follow prescribed treatments including thermal bathing and steam therapy, then sit down to restorative meals of soups, fruit, tea and traditional Tajik food.

That context is what gives the picture its force. The woman is not just posed at a table with food, she is inside a system of care that still runs on Soviet-era ideas of healing, routine and discipline. Official sanatorium information describes hot radon steam as part of its natural healing factor, alongside dietary dishes drawn from national and European cuisine. Travel references place Khoja Obi Garm about 48 to 50 kilometers north of Dushanbe, at roughly 1,940 to 1,960 meters above sea level in the Gissar mountain range, and the resort dates to 1934. Kearney’s frame turns all of that into a single domestic gesture.

The judges had plenty to choose from. The 2026 competition produced the awards’ largest shortlist to date, with 203 finalist images from photographers in more than 50 countries. In total, the World Food Photography Awards said it had received more than 120,000 entries from almost 100 countries since launching in 2011, when it was known as Pink Lady® Food Photographer of the Year before being rebranded in 2025.

The winners were announced at the Champagne Taittinger Awards Evening at the Mall Galleries in London, hosted by chef and food writer Gennaro Contaldo. The event gathered people from the food and arts worlds, and the finalist exhibition was scheduled to run at the Mall Galleries from 3 June to 7 June before a selection of images moved on to Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly.

Caroline Kenyon, who founded the awards, praised the emotional weight of Kearney’s winning frame and the way it layers dignity, color and composition into an apparently simple meal. That is the real shift the image points to: food photography is not only about glossy surfaces and perfect styling. In Kearney’s hands, it becomes a document of place, routine and care, and that is why a quiet canteen scene in Tajikistan rose above the field.