Martin Toft took the picture of Stuart Weaving – one of the original wealthy residents who moved to Jersey in the late 1960s and granted 1(1)(K) status – in 2015.
British serial entrepreneur Mr Weaving is known for having offered the Waterfront Enterprise Board, now the Jersey Development Company, £1 million for part of the Jardins de la Mer site in 2005, saying he would return the land to public ownership on the proviso it could not be built on.
Mr Toft said that the portrait, which is entitled High Net Worth Individual, is not about Mr Weaving ‘per se but rather what it represents within the context of an island that actively markets itself as an ideal location for wealthy individuals to settle with their families and businesses’.
He added: ‘I am very pleased that my portrait High Net Worth Individual has been selected as one of the winners in the prestigious portrait competition, Portrait of Britain 2018, presented by British Journal of Photography.
‘This will offer a lot of exposure, receive considerable press coverage and potentially be seen by millions of people, as the winning portraits will be exhibited on JCDecaux advertising screens nationwide, on bus stops, on high streets and in train stations, as part of the biggest exhibition of contemporary portraiture ever held in the UK.’
Mr Toft took the portrait at the beginning of Masterplan, a five-year project developed in collaboration with Archisle, which uses photography, film and archival research to tell the story of Jersey’s economic growth and development in the 20th and 21st centuries.
