2025 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize

Trace Elements

Lilah Benetti

Trace Elements, 2024 medium format analogue photograph hand-printed on cyanotype (sun-exposed photographic print) on 100% cotton rag 35 x 32 cm

Down by fishermen’s bay at Divinity Mosque in Senegal, during a research residency tracing ancestral connections to my Indigenous African heritage. A catch! A quiet gesture from a young boy, layered with cultural survival, inherited knowledge and the growing ecological impact of overfishing on traditional life. Hand-printed as a cyanotype on cotton rag during a residency in the UK, holding the ocean’s deep blue and the trace elements of history, labour, and loss carried through water and memory.