Germany’s Leica Camera AG is inviting professional photographers to submit their entries to the international Leica Oskar Barnack Award. Entries are accepted until March 1, 2011.
Participants are required to submit a series of 10 to 12 photographs capturing their observation on the interaction between man and his environment.
For the first time, the winner of the Leica Oskar Barnack Award will receive a Leica M9 camera and a lens worth £9,500 (abt $12,300) in addition to a cash prize of £5,000 (abt $6,500). For the “Newcomer Award,” open to all aspiring professional photographers aged 25 and under, the award has also been increased. The winner will receive a Leica M9 camera and a lens.
The competition is a memorial to Oskar Barnack (1879-1936), the inventor of the Leitz Camera. From 1914 on, he increasingly used the prototype camera he developed, today known as the Ur-Leica, for photography. The history of photojournalism is closely tied to his invention, as, beginning in 1925, the compact and easily carried Leica cameras were instrumental in enabling entirely new and expressive forms of photography.
[Site: Leica Oskar Barnack Award]