# Leica Oskar Barnack Award

The Leica Oskar Barnack Award, presented almost continuously since 1979, recognizes photography expressing the relationship between man and the environment. It was known as the Oskar Barnack Award when presented by World Press Photo between 1979 and 1992, and has been known as the Leica Oskar Barnack Award while presented by Leica Camera since 1995.

## 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 (1879–1936), designer of the first Leica camera, on the hundredth anniversary of his birth.
After a short hiatus, Leica (first the Leica Group but from shortly thereafter Leica Camera) resumed the award in 1995 and has continued it to date (2021). 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)

| Year | Winner | Subject |
| 1979 | Floris Bergkamp | Sea battle between Greenpeace and would-be dumpers of radioactive waste |
| 1980 | Björn Larsson Ask [Wikidata] | An 8-year-old undergoing skin transplants after serious burns |
| 1981 | Wendy Watriss | US veterans of the Vietnam war suffering from the effects of exposure to Agent Orange |
| 1982 | Neil McGahee | Two elderly brothers working as farmers |
| 1983 | Stormi Greener | The life of Hattie Vaughn, aged 106 |
| 1984 | Sebastião Salgado | Famine in Ethiopia |
| 1985 | David C. Turnley | Life in South Africa |
| 1986 | Jeff Share | The Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament |
| 1987 | Chris Steele-Perkins | Lives of Thalidomide victims |
| 1988 | Charles Mason [Wikidata] | Trapped Gray Whales in Alaska |
| 1989 | Raphaël Gaillarde | Research from a dirigible at the roof of the Amazon rainforest |
| 1990 | Barry Lewis | The effects of pollution from a lampblack factory in Copșa Mică, Romania |
| 1991 | Sebastião Salgado | Clearing up after sabotage of oilwells in Kuwait |
| 1992 | Eugene Richards | Drought in the Hadejia-Nguru wetlands |

## Winners, Leica period (1995 to present)

| Year | Winner | Title/[subject] | Remarks |
| 1995 | Gianni Berengo Gardin | La disperata allegria | |
| 1996 | Larry Towell | | |
| 1997 | Jane Evelyn Atwood | | |
| 1998 | Fabio Ponzio | | |
| 1999 | Claudine Doury | [minorities in Siberia] | |
| 2000 | Luc Delahaye | Winterreise [people in Russia] | |
| 2001 | Bertrand Meunier [Wikidata] | [social tensions in the north of China, 1999–2007] | |
| 2002 | Narelle Autio | Coastal dwellers [Australians at the beach] | |
| 2003 | Andrea Hoyer | Places of memory | Honourable mentions: Jan Grarup, [refugees]; Vanessa Winship, Albanian landscape |
| 2004 | Peter Granser | Coney Island | Honourable mentions: Martin Kollar, Nothing special; Alex Majoli, Hotel Marinum |
| 2005 | Guy Tillim | Johannesburg story | Honourable mention: Linn Schröder, Are you a frog? |
| 2006 | Tomás Munita | Kabul: Leaving the shadows | Honourable mention: James Whitlow Delano, Japan Mangaland |
| 2007 | Julio Bittencourt | In a window of Prestes Maia 911 building [squatters in a building in São Paulo] | Honourable mentions: José Cendón [Wikidata], [psychiatric hospitals in East Africa]; Margaret M. de Lange, [the photographer's daughters] |
| 2008 | Lucia Nimcová [Wikidata] | Unofficial [Nimcová's home town (Humenné, Slovakia)] | |
In 2009, the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award was added.
| Year | Award | Award | Newcomer Award | Newcomer Award |
| Year | Winner | Title/[subject] | Winner | Title/[subject] |
| 2009 | Mikhael Subotzky | Beaufort West [Beaufort West, South Africa] | Dominic Nahr [Wikidata] | The road to nowhere [refugees in eastern DRC during the 2008 Nord-Kivu campaign] |
| 2010 | Jens Olof Lasthein | Waiting for the future: Pictures from Abkhazia | Andy Spyra [Wikidata] | Kashmir [indigenous population of Kashmir] |
| 2011 | Jan Grarup | Haiti aftermath | Huang Jing (artist) | Pure of sight ["not dedicated to any subject in particular"] |
| 2012 | Frank Hallam Day | Alumascapes ["recreational vehicles" in Florida] | Piotr Zbierski | Pass by me [fleeting encounters with people] |
| 2013 | Evgenia Arbugaeva | Tiksi [Tiksi, Arctic Russia] | Ciril Jazbec | Waiting to move [Shishmaref, Alaska, threatened by global warming] |
In 2014, the Leica Oskar Barnack Public Award was added.
| Year | Award | Award | Newcomer Award | Newcomer Award | Public Award | Public Award |
| Year | Winner | Title/[subject] | Winner | Title/[subject] | Winner | Title/[subject] |
| 2014 | Martin Kollar | Field trip [ambiguities in a militarized Israel] | Alejandro Cegarra | The other side of the Tower of David [squatters in a tower block in Caracas] | Tadas Cerniauskas | Comfort zone [people on the beach] |
| 2015 | JH Engström | Tout Va Bien | Wiktoria Wojciechowska | Short Flashes | | |
| 2016 | Scarlett Coten | Mectoub | Clémentine Schneidermann | The Unbearable, the Sadness and the Rest | | |
| 2017 | Terje Abusdal | Slash & Burn | Sergey Melnitchenko | Behind the Scenes | | |
| 2018 | Max Pinckers | Red Ink | Mary Gelman | Svetlana | | |
| 2019 | Mustafah Abdulaziz | Water | Nanna Heitmann | Hiding from Baba Yaga | |
| 2020 | Luca Locatelli | Future Studies | Gonçalo Fonseca | New Lisbon | | |