Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2009

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.Please note the new category among other changes :

"The renowned photographic competition, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award will be celebrating its 30th year in 2009. On the occasion of this special jubilee, Leica Camera AG has revised the entry conditions and included numerous changes.

Entries for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award/Newcomers Award 2009 will be accepted as online submissions between 15 January and 1 March 2009.

A Newcomers Award will be incorporated in the competition for the first time. The competition for this award is open to all (prospective) photographers who are aged 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 in a sequence of up to 12 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.

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".

2008 winner : Lucia Nimcova

Photographer Lucia Nimcova has been chosen as the winner of this year’s Leica Oskar Barnack Award for her photo project “Unofficial“. The pictures of the winning series were taken in 2007 in Slovakia. Taking her home town as an example, she documents how time seems to have stood still since the fall of the Communist regime. Even years later, people and places do not seem to have changed at all, almost as if time had passed them by unnoticed and without a trace.

More info on the website

The Previous Winners:
2007 : Julio Bittencourt. Brazilian photographer won the award for a series of portraits of inhabitants of a house occupied by homeless people in downtown São Paulo.
2006 : Tomas Munita. Chilean photographer has won with his photo report ‘Kabul — Leaving the Shadows’.
2005 : Guy Tillim. The South African photographer with his photo report ‘Johannesburg Story’.
2004 : Peter Granser with his photo project 'Coney Island'.
2003 : Andrea Hoyer for her photo reportage of Russia, ‘Places of Memory’.
2002 : Narelle Autio, (Aus)
2001 : Bertrand Meunier, (F)
2000 : Luc Delahaye, (F)
1999 : Claudine Doury, Pantin (F)
1998 : Fabio Ponzio, Roma (I)
1997 : Jane Evelyn Atwood, New York (USA)
1996 : Larry Towell, Bothwell (C)
1995 : Gianni Berengo-Gardin, Milano (I)
1993/94 : Eugene Richards, New York (USA)
1992 : Sebastiao Salgado, Aimores (BR)
1991 : Barry Lewis, London (GB)
1990 : Raphael Gaillarde, Paris (F)
1989 : Charles Mason, Fairbanks (USA)
1988 : Chris Steele-Perkins, London (GB)
1987 : Jeff Share, Sherman Oakes (USA)
1986 : David C. Turnley, Detroit (USA)
1985 : Sebastiao Salgado, Aimores (BR)
1984 : Stormi Greener, Minneapolis (USA)
1983 : Neil McGahee, St. Paul (USA)
1982 : Wendy Watriss, Houston (USA)
1981 : Björn Larsson, Stockholm (S)
1980 : Floris Bergkamp, Alkmaar (NL)