Solms, Germany (January 12, 2011) - Leica Camera AG invites professional photographers to submit entries to the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award,’ an international photography competition. Photographers wishing to take part may submit their entries online from January 15, 2011 to March 1, 2011 at www.leica-oskar-barnack-preis.de. This year, the value of the competition prizes has significantly increased, with the award winner receiving their own piece of Leica history.

For the first time, the winner of the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’ will receive a Leica M9 camera and a lens worth 9,500 euros (approximately $12,300) in addition to a cash prize of 5,000 euros (approximately $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.

Competition entry conditions: An international jury awards the ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Award’ / ‘Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award’ to photographers whose unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between humans and the environment in graphic form in a sequence of up to 12 images. Entry submissions must be a self-contained series of images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between humans and the environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, unobtrusive and groundbreaking.

The competition is a memorial to Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), the inventor of the Leica. 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.

The terms and conditions of entry can be downloaded at www.leica-oskar-barnack-preis.de.