Leica Camera AG, Solms, extends their invitation to submit entries to their international photography competition for professional photographers, the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’. Applications from interested photographers will be accepted exclusively online at http://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/#/en/home between 15 January and 15 March 2010. The competition also includes the awarding of a ‘Newcomer Award’ that addresses all (prospective) professional photographers aged 25 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 in a sequence of between ten and twelve images. Entry submissions must be a self-contained series of 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 unintrusive. All photo series submitted will be displayed in a specially dedicated online gallery on the Leica website.

The ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’ is a prize of 5,000 euros or, alternatively, Leica camera equipment to the same value. The winner of the Newcomer Award receives 2,500 euros. The prizes will be presented in the course of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie photographic festival held in Arles, France.

Further information, the terms and conditions for entering and specific requirements for submissions will be available on the Leica website from 15 January 2010 and at http://www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com/#/en/home.

The competition history:
From 1914 on, Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), the inventor of the Leica, increasingly used the prototype camera he developed, today known as the Ur-Leica, for photography. He captured various events in entire series of photographs and became one of the earliest photographers to document the relationships between man and the environment. For instance, his photography of the floods in Wetzlar in 1920 is now considered to be the first reportage series ever shot with a 35-mm still-film camera.

The competition named after this photographic pioneer was first awarded in 1979, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Oskar Barnack’s birth.

The previous winners of the competition are:

1980 Floris Bergkamp, Alkmaar (NL)
1981 Björn Larsson, Stockholm (S)
1982 Wendy Watriss, Houston (USA)
1983 Neil McGahee, St. Paul (USA)
1984 Stormi Greener, Minneapolis (USA)
1985 Sebastiao Salgado, Aimores (BR)
1986 David C. Turnley, Detroit (USA)
1987 Jeff Share, Sherman Oakes (USA)
1988 Chris Steele-Perkins, London (GB)
1989 Charles Mason, Fairbanks (USA)
1990 Raphael Gaillarde, Paris (F)
1991 Barry Lewis, London (GB)
1992 Sebastiao Salgado, Aimores (BR)
1993/94 Eugene Richards, New York (USA)
1995 Gianni Berengo-Gardin, Milano (I)
1996 Larry Towell, Bothwell (C)
1997 Jane Evelyn Atwood, New York (USA)
1998 Fabio Ponzio, Roma (I)
1999 Claudine Doury, Pantin (F)
2000 Luc Delahaye, Paris (F)
2001 Bertrand Meunier, Paris (F)
2002 Narelle Autio, Sydney (AUS)
2003 Andrea Hoyer, New York (USA)
2004 Peter Granser, Stuttgart (D)
2005 Guy Tillim, Johannesburg (RSA)
2006 Tomas Munita, Santiago de Chile (RCH)
2007 Julio Bittencourt, Sao Paulo (BR)
2008 Lucia Nimcova, Humenne (SK)
2009 Mikhael Subotzky, Cape Town (ZA)