Tom Stoddart

Now established as one of the worlds most respected photojournalists Tom Stoddart began his photographic career on a local newspaper in his native North-East of England, before moving to London to work for a variety of papers on Fleet Street.

During a long and varied career he has witnessed such international events as the war in Lebanon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of President Nelson Mandela, the bloody siege of Sarajevo and the wars against Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

We are thrilled that Tom has agreed to join our panel of curators this year.

Nikki Sutherland

Nikki is acting picture editor of the Mail on Sunday is the daughter of News and Royal photographer Jim Bennett – and spent much of her school holidays following Jim about various events dragging an 800mm, or in the darkroom hand printing pictures.

From there she went to work for Nunn Syndication, before moving on to Kent News and then to The Mail on Sunday.

Nikki said “I am looking forward to doing this – I really like the idea of an exhibition that has a range of different people picking the pictures to give it a bit of variety”.

John downing

In a long career at the Daily Express John travelled the world covering a huge variety of stories. John was inside the Grand Hotel in Brighton when it was bombed, was imprisoned by Idi Amin, lived rough with the Guerrillas fighting the Russians in Afghanistan – and still found time to win Royal Photographer of the Year!

He was Press Photographer of the Year no less than seven times – as well as numerous other awards including an MBE.

John was also one of the founders of the Press Photographers Association – so we are particularly grateful that he has agreed to spend some of his valuable time to help us put together Assignments this year.

Lawrence Lustig

Lawrence started out as the “Saturday Boy” at SKR / Focus Press before being taken on as a trainee. From there he moved on to Sporting pictures and then to the Daily Star where he was ultimately made chief sports photographer.

In that role Lawrence has photographed numerous World Cups, Cup Finals, Olympic Games, Wimbledon tennis, Boxing title fights, Golf, Darts - pretty much everything you could imagine.

Lawrence is currently the official photographer for the Professional Darts Corporation and for the PGA Europrotour - and maintains close ties with the world of Boxing.

Lawrence said after picking his selection “I had the absolute privilege of being invited to be a judge for the BPPA assignments photographic exhibition.

I knew the very nature and caliber of this exhibition would encourage the best to enter their best but even this knowledge did not prepare me for how high the standard would be and how hard a task I would have to select my favourite 20.

Julie Edwards

Julie Edwards has been a freelance press photographer for just over 10 years after literally “elbowing” her way on to the red carpet in Leicester Square in 2008 following a change of career.

Julie mainly covers the Entertainment Industry, working with Film companies, theatre and musicians, behind the scenes or photographing happenings on the red carpet at most of the UK’s top entertainment events. Julie also regularly shoots as house photographer at BFI events, a number of UK film festivals and counts major film companies amongst her clients.

She says “I always look for the little moment at events, stories are not always about the big obvious images and I always aim to bring colour, life and sensitivity into my work”

Julie was asked to help curate this years “assignments” as she feels images from the entertainment industry are often overlooked despite it being huge part of many peoples lives nowadays .