Brian White, The Belgrave Wizard (PEOPLE 2026)

Baba Desi (Desmon Bergin) now 96 years old, in one of his favourite community shopfront locations. Much loved by the local community and known as an activist, "wizard", "healer" and "pirate" . Desi has a great many bizarre and colourful costumes and has for example, led the Belgrave Winter Solstice Festival for many years. After asking Desi if I could take his photograph and talking to him for about five minutes, I noticed that his way of talking and mannerisms such as slow smiling supportive agreements triggered my complete calm. This black and white cropped image strips away the distracting colours of Desi's costume and location to emphasize his calm positive agreeable deliberate empathetic smiling body language that reinforced his soft slow speech.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.