Leica Camera AG, Solms, is celebrating 100 years of Leica photography in 2014. To celebrate the centennial, the company will be doubling the value of the cash prizes for the prestigious international photography competition, the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. Oskar Barnack, after whom the award is named, was the man who constructed the so-called Ur-Leica in 1914 and thus revolutionised the possibilities for photographic expression.
From 2014 on, the winner of the main category of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award will be presented with a cash prize of 10,000 euros in addition to premium-quality Leica M-System equipment (a camera and lens), valuing a further 10,000 euros. The Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award for emerging talents aged 25 and under will also be made more attractive. With immediate effect, this award entails a cash prize of 5,000 euros. The winner of this category will also receive a Leica M camera with a lens. The award winners will be selected by an international jury of experts in spring 2014.
‘Leica has a history of cultural engagement that goes back several decades, particularly in the fields of photography and music, as well as in the areas where the two overlap’, said jury member Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, general manager of Leica Galleries International. ‘Sponsorship of photography as a creative art form has a long tradition at Leica, and the promotion of emerging talents is a particularly important part of this. So, for the centennial of Leica photography, it was only logical that we should increase the value of the prizes for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award and the award for up-and-coming photographers’, explained Rehn-Kaufmann, on the reasons for upgrading the award that has been presented every year since 1979.
For the first time in the award’s history, there will be a prize presented in a third category – the Leica Oskar Barnack Public Award. The winner of this category will be determined from a shortlist of candidates selected by the jury in an online vote organised in collaboration with www.i-shot-it.com, a platform for photographic competitions. The winner of this category will receive a cash prize of 2,500 euros. A draw for compact cameras as non-cash prizes will also be held for all those who participated in the vote.
Competition entry conditions:
The invitation to submit entries for the 2014 Leica Oskar Barnack Award begins on 15 December 2013 and closes on 31 January 2014. Professional photographers may submit their photo projects online in that time period. The terms and conditions of entry can be downloaded from the www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com website shortly before the start of the competition. We anticipate that the best entries will be published there starting in March 2014.
Submissions must be a self-contained series of up to 12 images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between man and environment with acute observational skill and in contemporary visual style – creative, discreet and groundbreaking.
The awards will be presented in the course of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie photographic festival held in Arles, in the south of France, in July 2014.With this competition, Leica Camera AG pays homage to Oskar Barnack (1879-1936), who invented the Ur-Leica in 1914. From then on, he increasingly used his prototype, which became the forefather of the handy and mobile Leica cameras that first appeared in 1925 and paved the way for entirely new forms of photographic expression, for example, photojournalism.