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Veteran snapper Clive Boursnell was given an Outstanding Achievement Award at the World Food Photography Awards 2025, for his 57 years of dedication to capturing first Covent Garden Market and then New Covent Garden Market on camera.

Announcing the award, Caroline Kenyon, Founder of host The Food Awards Company, said: “Sometimes you come across someone so special, you want to give them the recognition they deserve. That is why we created our Outstanding Achievement Award. We don’t give it every year, but this year, we have a wonderful recipient.”

The average adult attention span is 40 seconds, Caroline said, adding: “In this age of scrolling, multiple screens, information overload, can you imagine focusing on one subject for not 10 years, not 20 years, not 30 years or even 40 or 50 years, but 57 years?! One extraordinary man has done just this with his camera, photographing Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market since 1968. The people, the interactions, the produce, the building, the drama, the emotion, the fatigue, the effort. All of this is here in his photos.

“Covent Garden Market, for those of you here tonight who are from overseas, has been providing the British nation with fresh produce from all around the world for over 300 years. In 1974, it moved from its historic site, not far from here on the far side of Trafalgar Square, to Nine Elms, on the south side of the River Thames,” she said.

Clive, recounted Caroline, became a familiar figure in the market with his Hasselblad, sometimes even three cameras round his neck. He said: “In 1968 I was already very aware of Covent Garden Market, but what I suddenly realised very early one morning at the top of James Street – seeing the light casting a long, lit shadow, and the cigar smoke going up from the salesmen, and the dust from produce and the horses and the clatter of the barrels and the camaraderie between the porters and truck drivers and buyers – was this incredible display of humanity going on, all based upon trade.

“That interaction between produce and person… Suddenly I had this overwhelming passion to photograph it.”

Clive continued: As Rosalind Jana wrote in Another magazine a few years ago of his images: “Here everything is caught in passing. A hand. A face. A shared joke. A lit window. A box of broad beans. A barrow being pulled across slushy streets. A silent space waiting for the Outstanding achievement day’s deliveries.

“Each picture is like a tiny facet of a multifaceted diamond before it becomes a whole,” he said. “I asked myself time and time again, ‘if I could only use one piece of film, what is the picture I’d take to say this is Covent Garden?’ – and I was never able to answer it.”

Before Dave Samuels, Brand Director of awards sponsor Tenderstem® Bimi® Broccolini, presented Clive with his well-deserved award, Caroline concluded: “Beloved by all at New Covent Garden, author of multiple books, exhibitions, he is a man whose life that has ranged from farmhand to mountaineer, from woodsman to photographer. He is an artist whose modesty and gentleness is reflected in the tenderness with which he has captured people whose lives might never otherwise have been recorded.”

And so say all of us. Congratulations Clive from everyone at New Covent Garden Market – we’re sure your lifetime of achievements here are far from complete!

Photo credit: Henry Kenyon