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Wellington College is proud to celebrate the success of Mickey L, who has been awarded Third Prize in the Book Category at the 2025 International Photography Awards for her photographic book, a deeply personal project developed over three years.
The book brings together photographs captured from nature, society and everyday life, combining images from Mickey’s childhood with more recent work. Described by Mickey as “a personal record of my experiences and reflections on the journey of how I’ve grown, what I’ve learned and the happiness I’ve found,” the project explores happiness as something personal, evolving and open-ended.
Structured into five chapters, the book uses a mathematical symbol to represent each stage of Mickey’s journey. Together, these symbols form a traditional Chinese character meaning happiness. This concept runs through both the narrative of the work and its physical form, with the mathematical symbols incorporated into the embossed cover design.
The project began as an attempt to document moments that felt meaningful, fragments of everyday life, light and human presence that conveyed warmth or calm. Over time, Mickey’s approach evolved into a broader exploration of perspective and interpretation. She reflects that photography allowed her to consider how different people, places and even her younger self might respond differently to the same visual moment.
One of the most challenging aspects of creating the book was learning to edit with restraint. Moving from individual photographs to a cohesive body of work required difficult decisions, including letting go of images that held personal significance but did not serve the overall structure of the book. Translating an abstract idea such as happiness into a physical object through image sequencing, embossing and balancing concept and design was also a significant challenge.
Since receiving the award, Mickey has been invited to exhibit her work at exhibitions and has also organised her own exhibition, raising over £5,000 for charity through book sales.
Reflecting specifically on this book project, Mickey offers the following advice to other pupils pursuing ambitious creative work:
“Allow your projects time to mature, but do dare to dream. Ambitious work rarely arrives fully formed. It develops through experimentation, reflection and honest self-editing. Staying curious is essential, the process itself often becomes the most valuable part.”
Alongside her creative success, Mickey also completed the Pioneer Academics Research Program last year, a highly selective scheme pairing students with university scholars for one-to-one mentorship.
As part of the programme, she undertook a university-level research project in macroeconomics, analysing long-term economic growth in Canada using the Solow growth model and data spanning from 1976 to 2023. Her work was evaluated in the top 10% of her cohort, highlighting her academic excellence alongside her creative achievements.
A huge congratulations to Mickey, a wonderful ambassador for the College. We look forward to hearing about her future successes and wish her every success as she pursues her ambition to study in the United States after her final year at Wellington College.
