As a weekly magazine we test more photo gear than any other UK publication and our tests are respected around the world for their depth, authority and independence. Consequently the AP Awards, which have been an annual highlight in the calendar for over 40 years, are held in high regard within the global camera industry.
The 2024 AP Awards were held at the end of February at the Underglobe at Shakespeare’s Globe on London’s South Bank and the products revealed over the next few pages are this year’s winners.
The cameras and lenses available today are the most technologically advanced ever produced and the ones featured here are the cream of the crop. We’ve gone beyond the latest high-tech mirrorless cameras to recognise the best smartphones and drone camera, too. We also celebrate the finest accessories and software that we’ve reviewed.
In addition to our own favourite products we also present our annual gongs to great photographers and individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to photography. After all, cameras are nothing without the people behind them.
Power of Photography
Gideon Mendel
Mendel has been on a lifelong quest to bring attention to global issues with his powerful and captivating images
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Gideon Mendel was born in South Africa and began his photographic career in 1984 documenting the struggle against Apartheid. This inspired his lifelong quest to combine creativity with social issues. In 2001 he published his first book, A Broken Landscape: HIV and AIDS in Africa. Over the years his work has evolved, switching from black & white to colour and from traditional documentary style to environmental portraiture.
Now based in London, for the past 16 years his focus has been on capturing the human experience and physical impacts of climate change, with his Drowning World and Burning World projects. It is for this work that he is given our Power of Photography award. Showing catastrophic floods and the aftermath of wildfires, Mendel takes us into the lives of the affected individuals as they navigate the devastation in their wake and comprehend their profoundly altered landscape. His portraits are complemented by works that mine the surrounding details, the floating detritus and the scorched objects that are dislodged from their origin stories, damaged, warped and melted.
Writing in The Guardian about his work in Rhodes for the Burning World project, he said: ‘Moving through a seemingly endless topography of blackened hillsides and destroyed buildings, I could only bear witness to this human-made catastrophe. I hope these images can speak for all the landscapes and communities that are living through the climate emergency in such extreme ways.’
When Drowning World was exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery in 2023, he said: ‘My subjects have taken the time – in a situation of great distress – to engage the camera, looking out at us from their inundated homes and devastated surroundings. They are showing the world the calamity that has befallen them. They are not victims in this exchange: the camera records their dignity and resilience. They bear witness to the brutal reality that the poorest people on the planet almost always suffer the most from climate change.’
Gideon’s work is frequently exhibited in galleries, museums, and photo festivals. In 2023 his Fire and Flood projects were exhibited at Photo London, Photo Frome, Soho Photographers Quarter at The Photographers’ Gallery and on the Greenpeace stage at the 2023 Glastonbury Festival. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, the Greenpeace Photo Award, the Amnesty International Media Award and six World Press Photo Awards. He has also been shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2015 and 2019.
Lifetime Achievement
Jill Furmanovsky
Jill Furmanovsky’s career in music photography spans more than 50 years
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The winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award has photographed some of the world’s biggest bands and artists for over half a century. Born in Zimbabwe, Jill Furmanovsky moved with her family to swinging London at the age of 11. The seeds of her future career were sown just two years later when, as a 13-year-old Beatles fan, she would hang around outside Abbey Road Studios with her dad’s Instamatic, hoping for a glimpse of her heroes. She managed to track Paul McCartney down to his house and got a picture of him outside. Her first-ever rock photo.
Years later, as an art student enrolled on a two-week photography course, she took the college’s Pentax Spotmatic to a gig at The Rainbow Theatre, then a prestigious London venue. The in-house photographer asked her if she was a professional. She lied and said ‘yes’, then he asked her if she wanted a job. So, with just two weeks’ training, she became a music photographer.
It was unpaid, but shortly after, at the age of just 19, she was hired as the photographer on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon tour.
Jill’s arresting shots of the likes of Led Zeppelin and Bob Marley, as well as punk and post-punk legends such as the Sex Pistols, Clash and Joy Division were soon regularly gracing music weeklies and and she went on to shoot for and others. Jill developed a close working relationship with many of her subjects, most notably Oasis, for whom she, and in 2022 she celebrated her 50th year in the business.
