Todd Antony photographs Buzkashi like battle paintings and wins ADC Photography

Buzkashi — literally 'goat pulling' in Persian — is an archaic equestrian sport of Central Asia in which horse-mounted riders, called chapandaz, fight to scoop up a leather-wrapped carcass and carry it into a chalk goal known as the 'Circle of Justice'. Matches can draw hundreds of riders and thousands of spectators, and a single game can run for hours or even days. The New Zealand photographer Todd Antony set out to document the sport, still played in the mountain valleys of Tajikistan, with images that matched its scale.

Give Buzkashi the gravity of history painting: photograph its charging horsemen in dramatic black and white, so an obscure ancient sport gets images as epic as it is.

Antony travelled to Tajikistan, where buzkashi season runs from late October to early March, and shot the games over 2025 and 2026 in a dramatic black-and-white series. He describes arriving at a seemingly empty valley at dawn, then watching trucks arrive until thousands of spectators, hundreds of riders, horses and kebab fires had turned the spot into a temporary city. Riders lean almost sideways off their saddles to scoop up a carcass that can weigh 30 to 50 kilograms, then barge through crowds of horsemen to reach the goal, with music from long karnay trumpets driving the game on.

Antony composed the dust, smoke and charging riders so the images feel reminiscent of Napoleonic battle paintings rather than sports photography. His picture 'Generations' from the series was shown as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. In the 2026 Sony World Photography Awards, Buzkashi was among 30 finalists chosen from more than 430,000 entries across over 200 countries, and it won the Sport category of the Professional competition at the 16 April ceremony in London; the exhibition ran at Somerset House from 17 April to 4 May 2026. On 13 May 2026 the series took the Photography Best of Discipline at the ADC 105th Annual Awards in New York, where Antony also tied as Freelancer of the Year.

Buzkashi, which means 'goat pulling' in Persian, is an archaic equestrian sport played across Central Asia and still central to life in Tajikistan's mountain valleys. Horse-mounted riders called chapandaz battle to scoop up a heavy leather-wrapped carcass and drop it into a chalk goal known as the 'Circle of Justice'; matches can draw hundreds of riders and thousands of spectators, and a single game can last for hours or even days.

Todd Antony, a New Zealand photographer who works as both director and photographer, spent the 2025 and 2026 seasons documenting the sport in dramatic black and white. He describes arriving at a valley at dawn to find nobody there, then trucks arriving until a temporary city of spectators, riders, horses and kebab fires had appeared out of nowhere. Riders lean almost sideways from their saddles to lift carcasses weighing 30 to 50 kilograms and then charge through the crowd of horsemen, while long karnay trumpets sound throughout.

Antony deliberately composed the dust, smoke and motion so his pictures feel closer to Napoleonic battle paintings than to conventional sports photography, and his image 'Generations' was exhibited as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. In the Sony World Photography Awards 2026, Buzkashi made the 30 finalists selected from more than 430,000 entries from over 200 countries, then won the Sport category of the Professional competition at the ceremony in London on 16 April 2026, with the winners shown at Somerset House from 17 April to 4 May.

At the ADC 105th Annual Awards in New York on 13 May 2026, the series was named Best of Discipline in Photography, and Antony tied as the awards' Freelancer of the Year. The same year it was also listed among the series finalists for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award, giving a self-initiated personal project one of the strongest runs of recognition of any photography work in the 2026 awards season.

Treating buzkashi as material for history painting gave the images a gravity that ordinary sports photography does not reach.

Shooting in dramatic black and white across two seasons let the series grow into a body of work rather than a record of a single game.

The composition choices — dust, smoke, charging riders, the sounds implied in the frame — turn a niche event into a spectacle a stranger can feel.

As a self-promotion project, the series built the photographer's own brand as an author of cultural work, not just a hired shooter.

Shoot a niche spectacle with the seriousness of history painting and the craft becomes the story — grand black-and-white images lifted Buzkashi from obscurity to international awards.

The recognition changed the standing of an ongoing personal project: after winning Sony's Sport category and ADC's Photography discipline in 2026, Buzkashi continued through the awards season as a Leica Oskar Barnack Award series finalist, with new images dated through 2026 as Antony kept shooting. The ADC citation filed the work as self promotion — a freelancer making his own case — and the series became a calling card that shows a signature eye rather than a client list. By mid-2026 the pictures had been shown in London as part of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize and at Somerset House.