AMSTERDAM (October 1, 2009) – Today World Press Photo launched an online Web archive that contains all of the World Press prize-winning photographs all the way back to the founding of the contest in 1955.
The Web site is intended as a tool for media historians, students interested in the history of photojournalism, and for the photojournalism community, showing trends in the profession and developments in countries around the world, World Press Photo said in a statement today.
The new contest archive is online at www.worldpressphoto.org/archive.
“Our aim is to provide a showcase that will promote top photography and its authors," Michiel Munneke, managing director of World Press Photo said. "Until now, the only way to view past winners has been in the contest yearbooks, but these do not cover the entire period and most of them are out of print.”
The World Press Photo contest has a history that goes back more than half a century, and the winning photos make a unique collection that is not only a record of world events but also of developments in photojournalism. The archive has been established to share this record with the profession, Munneke said.
"The range of photos is enormous." Over the decades, juries have awarded some 2,100 prizes, World Press Photo says. At present, the archive includes just under 10,000 photographs, by 1,372 photographers of 79 nationalities. "The new archive Web site has been designed to be as intuitive and user-friendly as possible. Winners are arranged in chronological order, year by year. It is up to the users to decide whether they would prefer an overview for a particular year, or a breakdown according the category in which a prize-winning photo was registered. In addition, images may be accessed through an alphabetical listing of photographers’ names, or through further search options such as photographer’s nationality, photo agency, publication that commissioned the work, or specific awards."
World Press Photo winning photographs are further classified into eleven themed categories. Contest categories have changed over the years. Back in 1955, there were just three groupings: News, Sport and Stories. Today, the contest itself is arranged into ten categories. Along the way, such classifications as Happy News and Personality have arisen and disappeared. At one time the phenomenon of Color Picture Stories was so novel as to warrant its own section. The archive website outlines these developments, and also offers further information on the contest, such as details of contest entry statistics, as well as list of jury members for each year.
World Press said the archive project took two years to build and is not yet complete. "To maximize the potential of the archive, however, we need help. There are still gaps to be filled – pictures missing and, in isolated cases, even the photographer’s name unrecorded," Munneke said. "We are therefore also appealing to the photography community to contribute additional information, which we can then use in regular updates. The archive is intended as a research resource rather than a source of photos, but we will of course be happy to mediate and put anyone interested in using the pictures in contact with the photographers or their representatives.”
The World Press Photo contest archive team can be contacted for queries and feedback by sendingeMail to archives@worldpressphoto.org.
The contest archive project was supported by the Mondriaan Foundation and the VSB Foundation. World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon and TNT.
