This year's Hasselblad Masters 2026 include two Dutch winners. Svetlana Jovanovic won the Portrait category, while Gosse Bouma was honored in the Street category. They are among the seven photographers named Hasselblad Masters 2026 by Hasselblad, a prestigious title in the international photography world.
The winners were chosen from seventy finalists from around the world, selected for their technical mastery and strong personal vision.
The Hasselblad Masters, one of the world's most prestigious professional photography competitions, was created to showcase creative excellence and bring together established and emerging talent from around the globe. This year, the competition received more than 108,000 entries from photographers in 160 countries and regions across seven categories: Landscape, Architecture, Portrait, Art, Street, Wildlife, and Project//21.
Svetlana Jovanovic | Otherness | The Netherlands
With a background in psychology, Svetlana Jovanovic's portraiture is driven by a deep curiosity about identity—how we experience the world, construct our sense of self, and see ourselves through the eyes of others. Her style combines fine-art portraiture with a pursuit of visual beauty, based on the belief that concept and aesthetics are inextricably linked: they give each other meaning.
The winning photographs are part of Otherness, an ongoing project exploring identical twins and the tension between shared identity and individual presence. Although twins have much in common, the small differences that emerge over time—the subtle ways each person's character becomes visible within the shared image—are at the heart of the work.
Each portrait is a collaboration shaped both by the relationship between the twins and by the photographer's vision, inviting viewers to consider how we define ourselves, both apart from and through one another.
Last year, Svetlana was shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards 2025 in the Portrait category.
Gosse Bouma | Morning Ritual | The Netherlands
Gosse Bouma is a photographer whose work is driven by a quiet pursuit: offering moments of calm in a world that rarely slows down. His distinctive style lies at the intersection of urban geometry and natural elements, combining the hard lines of architecture with the soft, unpredictable textures of weather.
The same attention to calm, weather, and urban forms also runs through his photobook A New Light on Amsterdam.
Every photograph is imbued with the intention of evoking serenity amid the chaos of everyday life and creating visual experiences that invite stillness and reflection, if only for a fleeting moment.
His winning series, photographed throughout the Netherlands, focuses on street markets—places where people of all ages and backgrounds meet, exchange a few words, share warmth, and move on. By capturing these small, unhurried encounters, Bouma preserves something that is becoming increasingly rare in contemporary life: a genuine sense of community.
Hasselblad Masters
The Hasselblad Masters Awards is a prestigious biennial professional photography competition. It gives renowned professionals and promising newcomers an opportunity to make a name for themselves in the world of photography. The winners are determined through a combination of public voting and a professional jury comprising internationally renowned photographers and imaging experts.
The seven winners receive the title of Hasselblad Master, joining the distinguished community of previous Masters. They carry this distinction throughout their careers. They also receive a Hasselblad 100-megapixel medium-format camera, two XCD lenses, and an extensive creative budget of € 5,000.
The winners also participate in a collaborative project with Hasselblad, with their work featured in the Hasselblad Masters commemorative book and showcased across Hasselblad's global channels.
More information is available at www.hasselblad.com/masters.
