The Czech Press Photo photography competition’s international jury has now chosen the photo nominations for this year—its twenty-sixth. Contestants competed in seven photographic categories, with the jury assessing individual photos and series together. Its five experts evaluated over five thousand photos submitted by 288 photographers from the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Besides awards from the competition’s partners, one of the main awards—the Prague Grant, personally selected by Prague’s mayor Zdeněk Hřib—is being announced at the same time.
The international jury met at the Czech Photo Centre gallery; its members for this year were Joe Klamar from Agence France-Presse; Nicole Tung, a reportage photographer from the USA; Chris McGrath, an Australian photographer working for Getty Images; Herbert Slavík, a Czech photographer; and Petr Mlch, head of the Czech News Agency’s photo library.
The Photo of the Year will be announced together with the results within the categories at a gala ceremony held on December 2nd at the National Museum. This actual form taken on by this ceremony will be specified in accord with the appropriate government decrees.
This is the fifth year in which photos could be submitted using an electronic system. Submissions were open to photographers with permanent residence in the Czech Republic or Slovakia. The subsequent Czech Press Photo 2020 exhibition will begin somewhat later, in March of 2021, at the National Museum, and will run until October.
“The process of organizing this year’s jury and competition was dramatic. We left the flight arrival dates for the jurors for the last minute. I had to simply hope that everything would work out on schedule. Ultimately the international jury truly did assemble and meet at Czech Photo Centre in harmony with all the governmental decrees. More photos arrived than in the previous year, and the jury appreciated the fact that the submitted photos did not all solely repeat the pandemic as their topic. Now we stand before the question of how to announce the results and present the awards. Naturally we would love to meet up with the award-winning photographers, but in light of the current situation, we are preparing an online variant as well. The jury could only provide awards to three works per category, and meanwhile a large number of high-quality works arrived; precisely these works will be supplementing the award-winners and documenting the past year at the premier exhibition in the National Museum,” says Czech Press Photo competition director Veronika Souralová.
The Prague Grant is the competition’s second main prize. Its winning photo series is selected by the mayor of Prague at the recommendation of the international jury, which recommends selected series with the highest ratings. Amos Chapple won this award for his series “Prague’s Rooftop Creatures,” which documents the hidden statues on the rooftops of Prague. Mayor Zdeněk Hřib has this to say about the series: “Prague’s Rooftop Creatures is unique in that, even though it depicts a relatively unchanging topic—the view of the city and its panorama—it still initiates a story of characters, statues, that are responding to the space around them. They proudly tower above it, watch it, and pay tribute to it. They also popularize our city’s captivating character from a perspective that is normally inaccessible to people—forbidden to them. It thus symbolically opens this world up to us.”
The audience prize will be selected in an online vote by the readers of Lidé a Země Magazine. This prize will be announced during the gala award ceremony.
The Nominations for Czech Press Photo 2020. In each of the seven competition categories, the jury awards three category nominations for works that have reached the third voting round.
CURRENT EVENTS
Tomáš Benedikovič / Denník N / Kočner Marian Kočner surrounded by policemen in ski masks at a Specialized Court in Pezinok, Slovakia. February 27th, 2020.
Lukáš Kaboň / Deník / A Shooting at Ostrava’s University Hospital Early in the morning on December 10th, 2019, a twenty-four-year-old man shot a total of nine people in the waiting room at the outpatient department of Ostrava’s University Hospital. Four patients lost their lives immediately, while three other people later succumbed to their wounds.
Jaroslav Novák / TASR / Goodbye, Coronavirus People enjoying themselves at a banquet behind a roughly half-kilometer-long table on Prague’s Charles Bridge on June 30th, 2020. The organizers wanted this grandiose banquet to serve as a sort of symbolic goodbye to the coronavirus crisis.
REPORTAGE
Gabriel Kuchta / Deník N / An ICU During the Coronavirus Pandemic Doctors and other health care workers are treating patients infected with Covid-19 within an intensive care unit at Prague’s General University Hospital on March 29th, 2020.
Jarmila Štuková / The War-horses of Syria According to the World Arabian Horse Organization (WAHO), roughly 3,000 out of 8,500 registered Arabian horses were lost in the Syrian civil war.
Roman Vondrouš / ČTK / Disinfection via Ozone On September 9th, 2020, participants at the 2020 National Summit of Industry in Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel had to pass through a disinfection gate due to the coronavirus epidemic.
DAILY LIFE
Martin Divíšek / EPA / Prague in the Time of Coronavirus Prague emptied out, its people slowed down, and you could hear the roaring Vltava from Charles Bridge. The whole country had to get used to living with face masks.
Kevin V. Ton / A Ride in a Historic Streetcar The face-mask requirement is back. Czech Republic, September 27th, 2020.
Irena Zlámalová / A Year in One Woman’s Life Anna Julie Slováčková has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She is 24 years old. These photographs capture nine months of living with this treacherous disease.
ART AND CULTURE
David W Černý / Reuters / Cirk La Putyka in Action during the Movement Restrictions The members of Cirk La Putyka are putting on shows in the Prague streets to entertain local residents enduring the government’s anti-coronavirus restrictions on free movement.
Zdeněk Dvořák / Humberto behind the Mask Humberto is the only Czech circus that waited a month at a stop hoping for a change to the coronavirus situation. The other circuses had returned to their winter dens by its start. The state of emergency befell Humberto just after they’d pitched camp in Brno, before they could play a single show.
Matej Kalina / News and media holding / On the Front Lines After the first wave of the pandemic, the Andrej Bagar Theater in Nitra, Slovakia put on a show just for front-line workers—those directly treating people hit by the virus. And so the Nitra region’s medical and rescue workers came to watch the show.
SPORTS
Richard Dömös / The Sundial A melding of time and motion. This nighttime photo taken next to a sundial shows Michal Kovačovič, one of Slovakia’s leading BMX riders.
Gabriel Kuchta / Deník N / Fans Watching Soccer at a Drive-in Theater after the Renewal of Matches in the Top League Fans are watching a match between FC Viktoria Pilsen and AC Sparta Prague at a drive-in theater in Pilsen on May 27th, 2020.
Barbora Reichová / Czech Olympics Committee / The Indomitable Olympians These photos show the training and preparation activities of the nation’s top athletes during the state of emergency caused by the Covid-19 epidemic, which caused a shutdown of all sports grounds.
PORTRAITS
Richard Dömös / Quarantine This series portrays the photographer’s feelings in the course of visits to relatives during the quarantine period.
David Neff / MAFRA a.s./ Nurses after Their Shifts at the Anesthesiology and Resuscitation Department—the “COVID Corner” of Prague’s Na Bulovce Hospital Nurses after their shifts at the Anesthesiology and Resuscitation Department, the “COVID Corner” of Prague’s Na Bulovce Hospital. These medical workers are fighting for patients’ lives during 12-hour shifts, during which they wear special protective suits, and respirators devastate their faces.
Jano Stovka / The Actors The genius loci of State Theater Košice. Portraits of the actors.
HUMANS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Tomáš Predajňa / A Fractured Giant In the 16th century, cartographer Sebastian Münster described the Rhône glacier as a terrifyingly huge mass of ice. Now the 21st century bears witness to its decline, as well as efforts to postpone its end.
Petr Toman / Project Hydronaut Matyáš Šanda spent thirteen years building an underwater lab, whose future uses include space research. This station, named DeepLab H03, made its first dive in August 2020. The two divers inside spent a record-setting seven days filled with scientific observations.
Martin Veselý / MAFRA a.s. / A Shut-down Zoo The coronavirus necessitated a series of strict measures at the Dvůr Králové Safari Park, which was closed to visitors starting in mid-March. In this photo, a zookeeper is feeding a Marabou stork chick, and a Goliath heron is flying towards the camera.
Special Awards:
The Canon Junior Award for young photographers has gone to Monika Řeháková for her portrait entitled “Through.” The Committee of Goodwill – Olga Havlová Foundation award went to Milan Bureš from the weekly Respekt for his series Medics on the Street. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) award went to Lenka Klicperová with her series The Turkish Invasion. The Czech News Agency’s special paid internship for young photographers up to age 26, which will take place directly at the agency, went to David Stejskal with his Medics on the Street series. A new prize has been added this year in cooperation with Samsung, and it went to photographer David W Černý for his series from the canceled Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
The Czech Press Photo 2020 competition and exhibition are organized by Czech Photo o. p. s., under the patronage of the mayor of Prague and the minister of culture.
General partner: Trigema
Partners: Koupelny Ptáček, Cewe eContest, Siko, Renomia, Cushman & Wakefield, Berlitz, Cobra, Pictoart, Canon, Eizo, Samsung, Laufen, Nielsen, Soliter, Olympus, NEWTON Media, VDV, UNHCR, FotoŠkoda, and the Charles University Faculty of Social Sciences.
Main media partners: MAFRA a. s. and Český rozhlas 1 – Radiožurnál
Media partners: Reflex, ČTK, National Geographic, Prima Zoom, and Lidé a Země
Press release for download in .docx