International photo competition winners round up

© Edmund Clark wins The British Journal of Photography International Photography Award 2009 with Guantanamo: If the light goes out.

BRITISH JOURNAL OF PHOTOGRAPHY IPA AWARD
Edmund Clark has won The British Journal of Photography International Photography Award for his new project, Guantanamo: If the light goes out. Some of the work can be seen online at lens culture. One of the judges, Nick Galvin from Magnum Photos, said of the Guantanamo series: “Intellectually stimulating work.”

Clark’s previous project Killing Time was shot over two years, and captures life inside a wing for elderly prisoners. Follow this link online at Society Guardian, to see some of the work.

PRIX PICTET 2009
Winner of the £60,000 Prix Pictet photography prize for environmental sustainability is British based photographer Nadav Kander who was nominated for his series of photos Yangtze, The Long River Series, 2006-07 “documenting the rapidly changing landscape and communities of China’s Yangtze River, from its mouth to source”. Kander also scooped the $10,000 Lucie Awards IPA Prize in the International Photographer of the Year category with Elliott Wilcox as the Discovery of the Year and Rachel Papo as the Deeper Perspective Photographer of the Year (sponsored by Blurb). See earlier Hot Blog post on Wilcox.

To embargo or not to embargo?
I received the announcement of the winner last week but the press release was embargoed until 21:00. This raises the question of press embargoes and whether they are acknowledged. On a quick web search Katie Clifford found this post from aphotoeditor which was published before the embargo time. This begs the question as to whether, in a digital world where individuals can self  publish in real time, embargoes have any meaning. What happens when an embargo is not respected? If someone wants to “break” news, is it now a case of fastest fingers first? Later, aphotoeditor posted a reply to an email from a disgruntled press dept upset about him “breaking their news embargo”. “I think it’s insane that you would email blast bloggers the winner of a prize you haven’t handed out yet. PR at its worst,” he posted. Any views on this welcomed?