Oskar Barnack Award


The Oskar Barnack Award, presented almost continuously since 1979, recognizes photography expressing the relationship between man and the environment.

History and purpose

The Oskar Barnack Award was presented by World Press Photo for the years 1979 to 1992, in the following year. It was named after Oskar Barnack, designer of the first Leica camera, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
After a short hiatus, Leica resumed the award in 1995 and has continued it to date. It is now more formally titled the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.
The award is given to "professional 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 a minimum of 10 up to a maximum of 12 images".
A "Newcomer Award", for photographers aged 25 and below, was added in 2009; a "Public Award", with submissions via i-shot-it.com, in 2014.
The selection process does not demand that jurors recuse themselves from evaluating submissions by photographers from the same agency, for such a situation is not considered to present a juror with a conflict of interest.

Winners, World Press Photo period (1979–1992)

YearWinnerSubject
1979Floris BergkampSea battle between Greenpeace and would-be dumpers of radioactive waste
1980An 8-year-old undergoing skin transplants after serious burns
1981Wendy WatrissUS veterans of the Vietnam war suffering from the effects of exposure to Agent Orange
1982Neil McGaheeTwo elderly brothers working as farmers
1983Stormi GreenerThe life of Hattie Vaughn, aged 106
1984Sebastião SalgadoFamine in Ethiopia
1985David C. TurnleyLife in South Africa
1986Jeff ShareThe Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament
1987Chris Steele-PerkinsLives of Thalidomide victims
1988Trapped Gray Whales in Alaska
1989Raphaël GaillardeResearch from a dirigible at the roof of the Amazon rainforest
1990Barry LewisThe effects of pollution from a lampblack factory in Copşa Mică, Romania
1991Sebastião SalgadoClearing up after sabotage of oilwells in Kuwait
1992Eugene RichardsDrought in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands

Winners, Leica period (1995 to present)

for his series "Red Ink", made in 2017 in North Korea for The New Yorker.
In 2009, the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award was added.
In 2014, the Leica Oskar Barnack Public Award was added.