Vanessa Winship wins for the series Sweet Nothings, which portrays young schoolgirls leaving in the borderlands of Iraq, Iran, Syria and Armenia. "In this series of portraits Winship hoped the symbol of the uniform, the distance in repetition, and the austerity of the landscape would represent one thing," the judges say. "She also seeked the expressions of the girls faces to draw attention to the idea of these young girls poised at the moment “just before”. The moment where possibility lies, a time where the presentation of self, teeters into consciousness."

The Prize will allow her to expose her work individually at PhotoEspaña 2011.

Sweet Nothings has previously been awarded top prizes at World Press Photo and the Sony World Photography Award, which she won in 2008. She has exposed her work in Arles Workshop, Host Gallery, the Photographers Gallery of London, the Museum Kunsthal of Rotterdam and the National Portrait Gallery of London. Winship has published two monographs: Sweet Nothings in 2008 and Schwarzes Meer (The Black Sea) in 2007. Read an interview with Vanessa Winship and her work in the Balkans.

Winship was selected by a jury of photography experts that included Francisco Carpio, critic and independent curator; Brett Rogers, the Photographer's Gallery director; and Markus Hartmann, the director of international publications of Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern.

Visit www.vanessawinship.com.