A still from “Too Young to Wed,” by Stephanie Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock, both of VII Photo.

Stephanie Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock won first place in the Online Feature category of the 2013 World Press Photo Multimedia Contest for “Too Young to Wed.” The documentary multimedia project was produced for the Web and featured Sinclair’s images with motion work by Dimmock. It explores the cultural practice of allowing older men to marry girls under the age of 18 in countries like Ethiopia, Yemen and Afghanistan.

The World Press Photo organization announced its multimedia awards in three categories today in Amsterdam. All first-place winners for the 2013 Multimedia Contest will receive a cash award of 1,500 euros. Second and third place winners will receive a Golden Eye Award and a diploma.

The Too Young to Wed website is a partnership between the United Nations Population Fund and VII Photo. Other winners in the Online Feature category were Liz O. Baylen of the Los Angeles Times for “Dying for Relief: Bitter Pills,” which focuses on overcoming addiction to prescription pills; and Yang Enze of Southern Metropolis Daily for “Dreams on Freewheels” about seven members of China’s Disabled Track Cycling Team, who competed in the 2012 London Paralympic Games.

World Press Photo awarded Pep Bonet of Noor Images first place in the Online Short category for “Into the Shadows.” The online film focuses on the struggles of immigrants living in Johannesburg. Second place in this category went to Arkasha Stevenson of the Los Angeles Times for “Living with a Secret,” which explores gender identity in children. Jérôme Sessini of Magnum Photos won third place for his online short “Aleppo Battleground” about members of the Free Syria Army.

The third category of the World Press Photo Multimedia Contest was Interactive Documentary, which recognizes interactive online projects that feature a “combination of photography and/or film, with animation, graphics, illustrations, sound or text.” First place was awarded to Miquel Dewever-Plana and Isabelle Fougère for “Alma, a Tale of Violence” about gang violence in Guatemala. Jeremy Mendes and Leanne Allison won second place for “Bear 71” about a female grizzly bear; and Claire O’Neill, photo editor at National Public Radio (NPR) won third place for “Lost and Found: Discover a Black-and-White Era in Full Color” about a photo historian who found a collection of photos taken in the 1930s in the trash. An honorable mention in this category went to Jake Price for “UnknownSpring,” which chronicles a Japanese community recovering from the tsunami.

The jury members for this year’s World Press Photo Multimedia Contest were Keith W. Jenkins of NPR, photojournalists Samuel Bollendorff and Susan Meiselas, Kang Kyung-ran of Frontline News Service, writer and poet Patrick Mudekereza, Bjarke Myrthu of Storyplanet.com, Caspar Sonnen of IDFA DocLab and Alan Stoga of Zemi Communications.

This is the third year that World Press Photo, a non-profit which supports visual journalism through educational programs, grants and awards, has honored multimedia storytelling. Michiel Munneke, managing director of World Press Photo, noted that “with the multimedia competition we are trying to do justice to what we see happening in the field. Our ambition is to inspire photographers to move forward and explore new territories.”

To see a complete list of winners and to view the winning projects, visit www.worldpressphoto.org.

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The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) has awarded its annual Clifton C. Edom Award to Brian Storm, founder of multimedia production company MediaStorm, the photojournalists’ organization announced today. The award, named for the first head of the photojournalism program at the University of Missouri at Columbia and the founder of the awards now known as Pictures of the Year International, recognizes an individual who inspires and motivates members of the photojournalism community.

NPPA also announced several other awards.

The Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award was awarded to two recipients:  photographer Charles W. “Chick” Harrity, a former contributor to US News & World Report, and Dennis Dimick, executive environment editor and interim director of photography at National Geographic Magazine.

Jim Estrin, senior photographer at The New York Times and editor of the LENS blog will receive the Kenneth P. McLaughlin Award of Merit, given to those who render “continuing outstanding service in the interests of news photography.” John Harrington, photographer and writer on business issues, received the J. Winton Lemen Fellowship Award for service in the interests of press photography.

A full list of winners and honors can be found on the website NPPA.org.

South African photographer David Goldblatt will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 29th Annual Infinity Awards, the International Center of Photography (ICP) announced yesterday. The awards will be given at a gala to benefit ICP on May 1 in New York City.

Goldblatt, 82, has produced numerous books and museum exhibitions of his work, which defies definition as either art or documentary photography.  His work was included in ICP’s recent exhibition, “The Rise and Fall of Apartheid,” and is being exhibited now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In a statement announcing this year’s Infinity Award winners, ICP executive director Mark Robbins said, “We are pleased to recognize the achievement of this year’s recipients including David Goldblatt, who has dedicated his career to not only documenting his native South Africa but also to teaching visual literacy and photographic skills to youth disadvantaged by the system of apartheid.”

The Infinity Award for Photojournalism will be awarded to David Guttenfelder, the Chief Asia Photographer for the Associated Press, who has been documenting North Korea. The Infinity Award for Art will be awarded to Mishka Henner, who used Google Street View to capture images of the outskirts of European cities where sex workers have solicited clients.

Other winners of 2103 Infinity Awards are:
Young Photographer: Kitra Cahana
Publication: Cristina de Middel, The Afronauts
Applied/Fashion/Advertising: Erik Madigan Heck (selected for PDN’s 30 in 2011).

Not announced yesterday was a winner for the Cornell Capa Award, inaugurated in 2000 in honor of the founder of ICP.

Past winners of ICP Infinity Awards include William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, Daido Moriyama, Lee Friedlander, Annie Leibovitz, William Klein and Malick Sidibe.

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© Justin Maxon, from his Alexia Grant supported project. Jasmine Rasheed-Bacon, 6, consoles her cousin, Breonna Starkey-Bacon, 6, after she went into a closet to cry because of a disturbance in the house. The two cousins are very close and rely on each other for support. The girls live in a dangerous neighborhood called the Sun Village in Chester, PA, which is notorious for its drug trafficking and drug related crime.

The deadline for the 2013 Alexia Foundation grant is this Friday, January 18. The $15,000 grant will be awarded to a photographer who is looking for funding “to produce a substantial picture story that furthers the Foundation’s goals of promoting world peace and cultural understanding.”

The Alexia Foundation supports photojournalism that explores issues of social justice and cultural awareness. It was founded by Peter and Aphrodite Tsairis, in memory of their daughter, Alexia, who was killed in the bombing of a Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

In addition to the professional grant, the Alexia Foundation will also give out student awards that provide educational opportunities and cash grants for photography undergraduate and graduate students who are making work that coincides with the goals of the foundation. The deadline for entries for the student awards is February 1.

Last year’s professional grant was awarded to Justin Maxon, who has used the funding to work on a project about the number of murders that go unsolved in America. The student award went to Katie Orlinsky, who completed an internship at MediaStorm and worked on her project about the human cost of Mexico’s drug war.

Both Maxon and Orlinsky will speak about their work at “Images & Issues,” an Alexia Foundation exhibition and fundraising event that will be held January 23 at 25CPW Gallery in New York City. The event will feature an exhibition of the work of last year’s grant recipients, and images from past Alexia Grant winners, including Melanie Blanding, Wesley Law, Ismail Ferdous, Ezra Shaw, Bob Miller, Marie Aragon, Juliette Lynch, Matt Lutton, Veronica Wilson, Justin Yurkanin, Mark Murrmann, Christopher Lane, Ryan Henriksen, Peggy Peattie, Matt Black, Mackenzie Reiss, Ami Vitale, Katie Orlinsky, Justin Maxon, Stephanie Sinclair and Khaled Hasan.

Visit the Alexia Foundation site for more information on the grants and the exhibition.

Related: Anatomy of a Successful Grant Application: Tim Matsui on the Women’s Initiative Grant [Subscribers only; PDN subscribers can login to read this story]
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Ruins of a luxury Soviet restaurant near Baku. © Mila Teshaieva

Today Photolucida, the non-profit photo organization, announced that Mila Teshaieva won the 2012 Critical Mass Book Award for her documentary series “Promising Waters,” which explores the present-day identity of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, three countries located along the Caspian Sea. Her project will be published as a photo book by Photolucida and German publisher Kehrer Verlag.

The Berlin-based photographer notes on her website that the countries she has photographed “have emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union with immense oil and gas reserves and the enormous challenge of defining themselves as independent nations.”

The winners of the two Critical Mass Solo Show awards were announced as well. Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Oregon, will exhibit Tamas Dezso’s “Here, Anywhere.” This series also focuses on a former Eastern Bloc country, though the subject matter is the photographer’s native Hungary. The second Solo Show was awarded to Heidi Kirkpatrick of Portland, Oregon. Her work turns photography into sculpture and will be exhibited at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Each year Photolucida holds the Critical Mass competition, which permits photographers of all levels to submit a ten-image portfolio for consideration. A committee of approximately 20 jurors selects 200 finalists from all of the submissions, which are then voted on by over 200 members of the photo community. Past Critical Mass Book Award winners have included Jeff Rich, Birthe Pointek, Alejandro Cartagena, Donald Weber, Amy Stein, Peter van Agtmael and Louie Palu.

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Stanley Greene has won the 2013 Aftermath Grant for his proposal to create a new project, “The Rise of Islam in the Caucasus,” The Aftermath Project organization announced today. The Aftermath Grant, worth $20,000 in 2013, supports photographers whose work addresses the legacy of conflict.

In making the announcement, The Aftermath Project noted that Greene is the first “conflict photographer,” as Greene is widely known, to win an Aftermath Project grant. Greene is a member of the photographer collective NOOR Images.

Finalists for the grant include Gwenn Dubourthoumieu, who is pursuing an ongoing project about sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Boryana Katsarova, who is working in post-conflict Kosovo, concentrating on the city of Kosovska Mitrovia; Isabel Kiesewetter, who is working on a project that investigates how former military bases in East and West Germany are presently being utilized; and Martino Lombezzi, whose project examines the impact of the border fence between Lebanon and Israel has on local populations.

Greene’s proposal and those of the finalists were selected from 234 entries from around the world.

The first round of judging for the grant was completed by Aftermath Project Founder Sara Terry and Aperture editor Denise Wolff. Terry and photographers Nina Berman and Eros Hoagland selected the winner and finalists.

The 2013 Aftermath Project grant is supported by The Foundation to Promote Open Society.

Related: Anatomy of a Successful Grant Application
$20,000 Aftermath Project Grant for 2012 Awarded to Andrew Lichtenstein
Look3 Report: Stanley Greene on Luck, Film and Supporting Young Photographers
Eros Hoagland Wins $20K Grant for Conflict Photographers

The five publishers responsible for the European Publisher’s Award for Photography are now accepting submissions for their 2013 competition. The award, which gives one photographer the opportunity to publish a book with publishers in France, Spain, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2013.

Past winners include Bruce Gilden, Simon Norfolk, Paolo Pellegrin, Jacob Aue Sobol, Davide Monteleone and, most recently, Alessandro Imbriaco.

The five publishers who give the award are: Actes Sud (France), Blume (Spain), Dewi Lewis Publishing (Great Britain), Kehrer Verlag (Germany) and Peliti Associati (Italy).

The competition is open to photographers worldwide. The deadline for submissions January 31, 2013. For rules and entry instructions see Dewi Lewis Publishing’s site here.

Photographer Carrie Mae Weems received a State Department medal from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a luncheon on Friday, November 30, at the State Department in Washington, D.C. Clinton honored Weems and four other artists—Jeff Koons, Cai Guo-Qiang, Shahzia Sikander and Kiki Smith—with the first U.S. Department of State Medals of Arts ever awarded. The medals recognized the artists’ contributions to the “Art in Embassies” program, which creates art exhibitions in U.S. diplomatic buildings overseas. The EIN program celebrated its 50-year anniversary this year.

“Art is…a tool of diplomacy,” Clinton said during her remarks at the ceremony. “It is one that reaches beyond governments, past all of the official conference rooms and the presidential palaces, to connect with people all over the world.”

For more, including a video of Clinton’s remarks, visit the State Department site.

© Mishka Henner

The four finalists for the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, which comes with a 30,000 pound (about $48,000 US) award, have been announced. They are: Mishka Henner, Cristina de Middel, Chris Killip and the duo of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. The prize honors a contemporary photographer who has made a significant contribution to the medium of photography through an exhibition or publication. The shortlisted photographers will be exhibited in April at The Photographers Gallery in London.

This year the prize stirred controversy when it was awarded to John Stezaker, a veteran collage artist who does not take his own photos. This year’s finalists also includes artists who use photographs they don’t actually shoot with a camera.

The shortlisted artists were nominated by a group of over 100 photography industry leaders. The winner will be chosen by a six-person jury.

To read more about the shortlisted photographers’ projects, and members of the jury, see our full news story, now on PDNOnline.com.

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The cover of David Galjaard’s Concresco, which won the First PhotoBook Prize. © David Galjaard.

Paris Photo and the Aperture Foundation announced the winners of the first annual Paris Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards today.

The First PhotoBook Award went to Dutch photographer David Galjaard for his self-published book Concresco, about the remaining cold-war-era bunkers that dot the Albanian landscape. Open to all new bookmakers, the award includes a $10,000 prize.

An interior spread from Galjaard’s Concresco. © David Galjaard.

The PhotoBook of the Year award went to Anders Peterson for his City Diary (Volumes 1-3), which were designed by Greger Ulf Nilson and published by Steidl, and which depict the gritty sides of St. Petersburg, Stockholm and Tokyo.

The cover of Vol. 1 of Anders Petersen’s City Diary, which was named PhotoBook of the Year. © Anders Petersen, published by Steidl.

In the fall edition of Aperture’s Photobook Review, which announced the shortlisted books, the descriptions of the two eventual winners highlighted not only the content of the images, but the quality of the bookmaking.

“Concresco is a consistently and elegantly rendered physical object,” the short review pointed out. “This three-volume set of soft-cover paperbacks with gatefold-like flaps is densely printed on every surface,” a review noted of Petersen’s City Diary. “The ink fumes that emanate from the rough-cardboard envelope that acts as packaging are fittingly as strong and musky as the photographs themselves.”

The envelope packaging of Petersen’s City Diary. © Anders Petersen, published by Steidl.

The prizes were awarded by a jury that included Roxana Marcoci, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Thomas Seelig, curator and curator of collections at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography and the department of prints and drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Els Barents, director of the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography; and Timothy Prus, curator of AMC Books, selected the winners for both prizes.

All of the 30 books shortlisted for these prizes will be exhibited at Aperture in New York and will then tour to colleges, libraries and public exhibition space. To review the full shortlist visit The PhotoBook Review site here.