Candidates wishing to enter this year’s ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’, the long-established, international photographic competition for professional photographers, and the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award Newcomer’ for up-and coming photographers under the age of 25, may submit their entries between 1 March and 10 April 2017. The competition calls for the submission of self-contained series of between ten and a maximum of twelve images in which the photographers perceive and document the interaction between people and their environment in creative and groundbreaking style. Eligible for submission are series of photographs captured in 2016 and 2017 or work from long-term projects including at least some photographs made in this period. From 1 March 2017, entry forms and the terms and conditions of entry will be available from the competition website at www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com.

As in the previous year, the presentation of the awards to the winners in both categories of the 37th Leica Oskar Barnack Award will take place in the course of a gala event in Berlin. The career of the inventor of the revolutionary and iconic 35 mm camera, the ‘Ur-Leica’, began in the German capital. In 1959, close to the Giesensdorfer Schule in Berlin, which Oskar Barnack visited as a child, and where children are still taught today, a street was given the name ‘Barnackufer’ to commemorate the school’s most famous pupil.

With prizes amounting to a total cash value of 80,000 euros, the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’ is one of the segment’s most prestigious photographic competitions. The winner in the main category will be honoured with a cash prize of 25,000 euros and Leica M-System equipment (a camera and lens) valued at an additional 10,000 euros. The winner of the Newcomer Award will be honoured with a cash prize of 10,000 euros and will also receive a Leica rangefinder camera and lens. In addition to the two main categories, ten further submissions to the competition will each be honoured with prizes of 2,500 euros. The portfolios entered by all finalists will be published on the www.leica-oskar-barnack-award.com website and in the magazine published specially for the competition.