Leading figures from the international photographic community are announced today, 3 December 2009, as the jury members of three separate award programmes of the Sony World Photography Awards 2010.

The Honorary Jury for the main annual competition comprises 12 specially selected World Photography Organisation Academy members. For the professional awards selection, these 12 members will initially judge within their respective photographic genres of expertise. Later they will come together as one collective group to select the overall winners in both the amateur and professional programmes, and the overall winner, the I’Iris D’Or.

The official pre-selection committee of the amateur competition is iStockphoto, the internet’s original member-generated image and design community. iStockphoto is the world’s busiest online image market which has helped thousands of amateur photographers increase their skills and go on to sell their work professionally.

A jury for the Student Focus Programme is also selected from the Academy members.

The 2010 WPA Honorary Jury
Judging the Commercial categories are: Chair, Mark Sealy (UK), Director of Autograph (The Association of Black Photographers); Nadav Kander (UK), photographer; Scott Thode (US), Deputy Picture Editor of Fortune Magazine and Chloe Limpkin (UK), Picture Director of Harper’s Bazaar.

Judging the Photojournalism and Documentary categories are: Chair, Aidan Sullivan (UK), Vice President Getty Images; Pablo Bartholomew (India), photographer and educator; Roberto Koch (Italy), Publisher, Contrasto and Founder of FORMA (the international Centre of Photography in Milan) and Monica Allende (UK), Picture Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine.

Judging the Fine Art categories are: Chair, Bill Hunt (US), Co-founder of Hasted Hunt Gallery in New York; Trisha Ziff (Mexico), curator, scholar, film-maker; Michelle Dunn (USA), Co-Publisher of Aperture Magazine and Editor-at-Large at Chronicle Books and Bohnchang Koo (Korea), photographer.

Student Focus Programme
The judges for the Student Focus, a competition which involves over 120 photographic institutions around the world, are: Adrian Evans (UK), Director of Panos pictures agency; Adrian Boot (UK), music photographer and co-founder of www.urbanimage.tv; Jonathon Torgovnik (US), widely exhibited documentary photographer and co-founder of NGO, Foundation Rwanda; Idris Khan (UK), artist and Sue Steward (UK), photography critic, writer, radio broadcaster, photo-editor and journalist.

Astrid Merget, Creative Director of the Sony World Photography Awards, comments: ‘It is a great honour to announce the judges of the 2010 Awards. We are privileged to have such an extraordinarily influential jury – from photographers to photo editors, gallery owners and film-makers. The quality of submissions this year has been impressively high, and we look forward to working closely with the jury to discover the winners for the 2010 awards”.

Key dates for the Sony World Photography Awards 2010

2010

4 January Closing date for professional and amateur categories
12 January Lifetime Achievement Award announcement
19-29 January Global Tour exhibition, Art Work Space, London
23 February Shortlist announcement
23 March Category winners’ announcement

Cannes, France

19 – 25 April World Photography Festival
21 – 23 April The Photographers’ Programme
22 April Sony World Photography Awards ceremony

www.worldphotographyawards.org

Created by the World Photography Organisation, the World Photography Awards (WPA), sponsored by Sony launched in 2007. The World Photography Organisation (WPO) supports professional, amateur and student photography, lending a global platform for the photographic industry to communicate, converge and showcase current trends in Photojournalism, Fine Art and Commercial Photography. Delivering various initiatives and programmes across this global community under the “World Photography” brand, these programmes involve the photographer in commercial, cultural and educational activities within the many industry sectors, whilst also creating cultural activities for the public to participate in. Also currently included within the World Photography portfolio are the World Photography Student Focus Competition; the World Photography Awards Global Tour, the World Photography Festival, the World Photography Focus Programme and the recently launched World Photography Collection.

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