Leica Camera is accepting entries for the 2012 Leica Oskar Barnack Award. Professional photographers are invited to apply online through March 1, 2012 at www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com. The winners of the 2012 Leica Oskar Barnack Award and Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award will be announced during the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie festival in Arles, France from July 2-8, 2012.
The award has been presented since 1979, the year marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leica inventor Oskar Barnack.
The winner of the 2012 Leica Oskar Barnack Award will receive a Leica M9-P camera and lens worth approximately €10,000, in addition to a cash prize of €5,000. The winner of the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award for (aspiring) professional photographers aged 25 and under will also receive a Leica M9-P complete with lens.
An international jury will give the awards to photographers whose “unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between people and their environment in a portfolio of up to 12 images. Submissions must be a self-contained series of images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between people and their environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, unobtrusive and groundbreaking.”
The members of this year’s jury include: Bruce Gilden, Magnum Photographer, Stephan Erfurt, Director of C/O Berlin, Valérie Fougeirol, Creative Director of the Magnum Gallery in Paris, Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, Artistic Director of the Leica Galerie in Salzburg and Brigitte Schaller, Art Director of Leica Fotografie International Magazine.
