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.
All photo series submitted will be displayed in a special online gallery section of the Leica website for a period of time, ending with the request for entries for the new competition. All photographers have the possibility to be displayed in the online gallery under a nickname.