The best new portrait photography from around the world will feature in a stunning exhibition which opens at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (SNPG) in Edinburgh this week. The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize brings together 60 outstanding entries from the 2013 competition, which attracted more than 5,000 submissions from some of the most talented photographers working today.

Established in 1993, this prestigious prize is organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London and has been sponsored by international law firm Taylor Wessing for the last six years. The £12,000 first prize was awarded this year to Spencer Murphy, 35, for his mesmerising portrait of Irish jump jockey Katie Walsh. The image was taken at Kempton Park racecourse, and shows the mud-spattered and dishevelled Murphy in the racing colours of Seabass, the horse which she rode to third place in the 2012 Grand National.

Speaking of his winning portrait, Spencer Murphy said: ‘I wanted to show both her femininity and the toughness of spirit she requires to compete against the best riders in one of the most demanding disciplines in horse racing. I chose to shoot the series on large format film, to give the images a depth and timelessness that I think would have been hard to achieve on a digital camera.’

Second prize was taken by Giles Price, a former Royal Marine Commando who took up photography during the first Gulf War in Iraq. His image Kumbh Mela Pilgrim Mamta Dubey and infant is part of a series shot in a makeshift, pop-up studio at the 2013 Kumbh Mela, the annual congregation of up to 100 million Hindu pilgrims in Allahabad, India.

Anoush Abrar’s simple but hugely powerful portrait of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan took third prize. The Iranian-born photographer’s achievement is made all the more remarkable by the fact that he had only three minutes of the Ghanaian diplomat’s time to complete his commission for the German publication Zeitmagazin.

The competition creates a fascinating mix of work by established professionals, photography students and gifted amateurs, working in a diverse range of styles and approaches, from editorial and advertising images to fine art. This year Dorothea Deiss, a paediatric endocrinologist in a Berlin clinic, who works on photographic projects in her spare time, was awarded fourth prize for her striking portrait of seventy-five-year-old identical twins Esther and Ruth, whom she photographed at their home for her series VisibleInvisible.

Among the diverse range of sitters and subjects featured in the show are a number of engaging portraits of well-known figures such as the actor Vanessa Redgrave, novelist Zadie Smith, Classical historian Mary Beard, ex-footballer Sol Campbell; columnist and TV personality Charlie Brooker; and the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, photographed in the dock of the Magistrate Court in Pretoria.

Portraits taken in Ghana, USA, South Africa, the Dominican Republic, Syria, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Peru and Switzerland demonstrate the international scope and continuing significance of the competition.

Speaking of the exhibition, Annie Lyden, International Photography Curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: ‘Portraiture is a critical component of photography dating back to the 1840s. This exhibition celebrates the genre from a contemporary perspective—presenting a multitude of portraits from celebrity figures to the unknown; the joyous to the melancholic; the everyday to the quirky, all of which are represented by these works.’

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery London and competition judge, added: ‘The 2013 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exemplifies photographic portraiture at its most perceptive. These are sharp, engaging portraits. My congratulations to all the prize-winners.’

Tim Eyles, UK Managing Partner at international law firm Taylor Wessing and competition judge, added: ‘The photographic talent in the competition this year was as outstanding as ever. The selection of these winning portraits from the thousands submitted is a great testament to their quality. Our congratulations to all the shortlisted photographers.’’

The Exhibition is organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London.