Thomas Hoepker and Christian Skrein in front of one of Scarlett Coten’s winning photos in the Oskar Barnack Award.

The 2016 Leica Oskar Barnack Awards returned to Berlin. The award ceremony took place in an event space that was once a church.

Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, majority owner of Leica, explained the background of the award, named after Leica Camera inventor Oskar Barnack.

The Leica Oskar Barnack Award for 2016 went to Scarlett Coten for her series of images ‘Mectoub’. The French photographer focused on the supposedly archetypal machismo of men in the Arab world and the dichotomy between social conformity and personal expression. The award consists of a 25,000 euro cash prize of and a Leica M-System.

This year’s ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award’ went to photographer Clémentine Schneidermann for her series ‘The Unbearable, the Sadness and the Rest’. About a year ago, the Parisian-born photographer moved to the town of Abertillery in South Wales. It combines the documentary, portrait and fashion photography in one of the most economically depressed areas of the UK. The ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award’ is a cash prize of 10,000 euros and a Leica rangefinder camera.

‘I would like to congratulate this year’s winners, Scarlett Coten und Clémentine Schneidermann, in the name of the entire jury of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. With their photographs, both have cast an impressively humanistic eye on elements of modern society in which people take center stage. With their exceptionally direct visual language, the two photographers highlight relevant social and socio-political issues of contemporary society’, said Karin Rehn-Kaufmann, director general of Leica Galerien International.

There were more than 3,200 entries from 108 different countries.

The ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’ exhibition can be viewed daily from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. from  September 29 to  October 23, 2016 at Neue Schule für Fotografie, Brunnenstrasse 188-190, 10119 Berlin. Further details: www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com.