On 23 August 2021, the shortlist for this year’s Felix Schoeller Photo Awards was published on our website. It includes a total of 40 works, of which 17 are from the German Peace Prize for Photography and 23 from the Emerging Photographer Award. Once again, the field of participants is international, with works coming from 15 countries. Sixteen works were submitted by German photographers, six from other European countries, five from Iran, four from Russia, followed by Bangladesh (3), the USA and Argentina, Turkey, Iraq, Nigeria and India with one submission each. On 26 August 2021, these works will face the verdict of the esteemed juries, who will then select the nominees and the winning works. Due to the pandemic, the jury meetings will be held as online conferences this year.

“The jury members do not know the names and backgrounds of the photographers at the time of the judging. For this reason, we are initially publishing the shortlist without this information; it will be added after the jury meetings,” explains Dr. Friederike Texter. “The work will not be easy for the jurors. Unlike in face-to-face jury sessions, the condensation of the submitted works onto the shortlist already took place in a second online judging step, in which the jury members were asked to focus strongly in their judgement. This means that on a scale of one to ten, ten points were generally awarded for preferred works, while works judged to be less strong in the selection received only one point. Thus, four works were awarded the highest number of points for the Peace Prize and five for the Emerging Photograpers’ Prize. We expect interesting and exciting discussions in the jury sessions.”

The jury for the Young Talent Award includes the internationally renowned portrait photographer Michael Dannenmann (DGPh) as jury chairman, and the photography expert and art advisor Simone Klein (DGPh board member), the gallery owner Clara Maria Sels and Nils-Arne Kässens, director of the Osnabrücks’ Museum Quarter, as further jury members. This jury will be supplemented for the Peace Prize by the peace researcher Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schneckener from the University of Osnabrück.

After the jury’s verdict, the five nominees per category will be published on the website on 30 August. The award ceremony for both categories will take place on 2 October in a virtual event to which all nominees will be connected. The German Peace Prize for Photography, which is awarded in cooperation with the Osnabrück (City of Peace), comes with prize money of 10,000 euros. The winner of the Emerging Photographer Award can look forward to prize money of 2,500 euros. In addition, all nominees in the Emerging Photographer category will receive an exclusive online session with a jury member to discuss their work (portfolio presentation).