Ed Alcock (b. 1974, UK) is an Anglo-French photographer based in Paris and the recipient of the Prix Niépce – Gens d’Images 2025. Working in editorial photography and personally motivated documentary work, his practice explores family, transmission, and identity, examining how narratives are constructed and inherited.
Alcock’s long-standing editorial career remains central to his work. After receiving Best Student Photographer of the Year in 1999 from The Guardian and The Independent, he moved to Paris in 2000 and became a correspondent for The New York Times. He now collaborates with publications including The Economist, Elle, Le Monde, Le Nouvel Obs, and El País, and has been a member of the MYOP agency since 2011. This engagement with current affairs and portraiture informs his personal projects.
His recent project, Buried Treasure (2025), emerged from discovering a foundational family story - an alleged fatal mining accident - had been fabricated. The work explores the transmission and erasure of narratives and the fragility of collective memory in post-industrial Britain. Other major series include Home, Sweet Home, a four-year study of Brexit’s upheaval, and Stérile, chronicling life during the 2020 pandemic. Earlier works such as Hobbledehoy (published by Terrebleue with a story by Emmanuel Carrère), Love Lane, and The Wait explore adolescence, family relationships, and inherited trauma.
Alcock’s work has been widely exhibited. In 2025, mid-career retrospectives will be shown at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and Jeu de Paume, curated respectively by Héloïse Conesa and Quentin Bajac. In 2024, Zones à risque was shown at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (La France sous leurs yeux), then at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce and Hôtel Fontfreyde – Centre Photographique. His portraits were selected for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2022, 2023, and 2025, and his work has appeared at Rencontres d’Arles, Circulation[s], Galerie Château d’Eau, KT&G Sangsangmadang, GoEun Museum, and Lentos Kunstmuseum.