Application form and contest rules for participation now available online

January 23, 2009 – Submissions for the “Leica Oskar Barnack Award” 2009 are now being accepted. All photographers can enter the competition and view contest rules online at www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com.

A renowned photographic competition, the “Leica Oskar Barnack Award” is celebrating its 30th year. To commemorate this landmark, Leica Camera AG has revised the entry conditions and has made numerous changes to the award process.

Entries for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2009 will be accepted exclusively as online submissions between January 15 and March 1, 2009. All photo series submitted will be displayed in a special online gallery section of the Leica website for a period of one year, ending with the request for entries for the new competition. Additionally, a “Newcomer Award” will be incorporated into the competition for the first time, open to all (prospective) photographers age 25 years and under.

An international jury awards the “Leica Oskar Barnack Award” / “Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award” to photographers whose unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between man and the environment in the most graphic form. Entry submissions must be a self-contained series of twelve images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between man and the environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, groundbreaking and unobtrusive.

The winner of the “Leica Oskar Barnack Award” will receive 5,000 euros or, alternatively, Leica camera equipment to the same value. The winner of the “Newcomer Award” will be awarded 2,500 euros. The prizes will be presented in the course of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie photographic festival held in Arles, France.