The Taylor Wessing Prize has no future if it continues to be so insipidly PC

We know what to expect from the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. Africans in tribal dress. Flame-haired girls posing with animals. Nudes, generally grotesque: obese hanging bellies, a limb missing here or there. Wizened (but wise!) faces. Low-level child pornography. In 2012 the National Portrait Gallery was fortunate to avoid the wandering gaze of Operation Yewtree.

Certain archetypes always seem to make the grade. Perhaps the judges have finally woken up to the clichés, because the choice of finalists this year is not predictable but baffling.

The first prize was awarded to David Titlow for a photograph of his nine month-old son. Imagine The Creation of Adam, with a dog in place of God and a baby in place of Adam. It’s not as interesting as it sounds. If Polly Toynbee ever constructs an Atheist Cathedral in the grounds of one her Tuscan estates she should have it frescoed on the ceiling.

Second and third place prizes were awarded to technically competent portraits of children. There is little else to say about them.

[caption id="attachment_8922972" align="aligncenter" width="520"] Fourth prize: 'Indecisive Moment' by Blerim Racaj, 2013. Copyright: Blerim Racaj[/caption]

The fourth place prize winner is comically awful. Four morose teenagers sit on concrete steps and one of them pours a drink from a bottle. This exciting scene is rendered in monochrome. It is crying out for contrast, although the deepest shadows wouldn’t save it. This throwaway snapshot was processed to look as if it was taken in a light fog. It is reminiscent of the disposable photographs people used to post on Instagram. (In the world of elderly critics, Instagram filters are still a 'thing'. Da kidz have moved on.)

These submissions won prize money. This is inexplicable, but there is work here which deserves praise. You have to search for exceptional pieces in this exhibition. They are difficult to spot because the most offensive portraitists always make such big prints.

Laura Pannack’s image of a Jewish girl from Stamford Hill won the John Kobal New Work Award for young photographers. It is deceptively simple, but the artist has created a timeless portrait. This is how Vermeer would have used a camera.

[caption id="attachment_8922982" align="aligncenter" width="520"] 'How Vermeer would have used a camera': Chayla at Shul by Laura Pannack. Copyright: Laura Pannack[/caption]

Paul Stuart renders Berlusconi as a piece of rock, or perhaps a Roman bust created by a sculptor with a grievance. It is malicious and technically flawless.

Several entries seem to exist purely to fill quotas. Jill Wooster’s With Reg provides this year’s take on the white working classes. Gabrielle Motola’s portrait of a disabled rights activist – tick! – is awkward but not remotely challenging. If the subject wasn’t disabled it would have been cast aside like thousands of similar examples of substandard work. It looks like it was lit with an on-camera flash. This is a cardinal sin, as any student photographer knows.

Despite the £12,000 top prize and its annual residence in the National Portrait Gallery, this exhibition is still relatively obscure. People are suspicious of portrait photography as an art form. Taylor Wessing, an international law firm 'for the industries of tomorrow’ has been seduced by the politically correct images of yesterday. It must shoulder part of the blame.