{"id":688466,"date":"2026-07-13T00:56:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688466\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T00:56:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T00:56:07","slug":"a-goat-versus-gaza-leicas-award-shortlist-highlights-one-of-the-biggest-challenges-in-photography-contests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/688466\/","title":{"rendered":"A goat versus Gaza: Leica’s award shortlist highlights one of the biggest challenges in photography contests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leica<\/a> has unveiled the 12 photographers shortlisted for its 2026 Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA)<\/a>, one of photography’s longest-running and most generously funded prizes. And while all the work is predictably excellent, I have to admit: I found initially skimming the list a little disorienting.<\/p>\n

Saher Alghorra’s Witnessing Gaza documents a war in its full brutality: scarcity, starvation, violence, loss. A few names down the alphabetical list sits Todd Antony’s black-and-white study of buzkashi, the Central Asian sport in which horsemen fight over a headless goat carcass.<\/p>\n

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Both are, by any reasonable definition, excellent photography. Both are also competing for the same prize, judged against the same criteria, on the same afternoon in October. That’s not really Leica’s fault; it’s baked into pretty much every major photography award. But it’s still worth thinking about, I think.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From\"\"\"\"LOBA’s mission<\/p>\n

LOBA aims to recognize photographers who capture the relationship between people and their environment, which is a pretty broad remit. But there’s no escaping the fact that breadth has a cost.<\/p>\n

When Alghorra’s series sits on the same shortlist as Antony’s, or as Laila AnnMarie Stevens’s tender Clayton Sisterhood Project about her own family building a life in North Carolina, the jury isn’t just comparing photographs; it’s comparing categories of human experience.<\/p>\n

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Buzkashi is more than just a sport. It is centuries of history and politics handed down from generation to generation, Tajikistan 2026. From the series Buzkashi (Image credit: \u00a9 Todd Antony\/LOBA 2026)<\/p>\n

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Three generations: Geneva, Jennifer and Shantell, Bayside, Queens 2022. From the series Clayton Sisterhood Project (Image credit: \u00a9 Laila AnnMarie Stevens\/LOBA 2026)<\/p>\n

Is a perfectly composed, technically daring image of a goat-wrestling contest “better” or “worse” than a raw, urgent image from inside a warzone? That question is near-impossible to answer, and yet five judges are going to have to answer some version of it anyway.<\/p>\n

Conflict and crisis<\/p>\n

This year’s list makes the tension unusually visible because it leans so heavily toward conflict and crisis.<\/p>\n

The best camera deals, reviews, product advice, and unmissable photography news, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

Valery Melnikov’s Mariupol: Open Wounds returns to the aftermath of the 2022 siege of the Ukrainian city. Anush Babajanyan documents the Aral Sea’s collapse and the communities adapting around it.<\/p>\n

Set against that, gentler work like William Keo’s Extramuros, a study of French banlieue youth, or David Sl\u00e1dek’s two-decade portrait of one Slovakian village, risk looking slight\u2026 even when they aren’t.<\/p>\n

Again, this isn’t an issue unique to LOBA. World Press Photo, the Sony<\/a> World Photography Awards, Prix Pictet \u2013 practically every major contest with a general remit has the same structural issue.<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

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Local resident Daniel (18) was wounded in the arm during a shell explosion near his house, Mariupol, Ukraine 2022. From the series Mariupol: Open Wounds (Image credit: \u00a9 Valery Melnikov\/LOBA 2026)<\/p>\n

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Younes and Sandra, Seine-Saint-Denis, France 2024. From the series Extramuros (Image credit: \u00a9 William Keo\/LOBA 2026)<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the newly launched Women in Photography Grant<\/a> avoids it entirely, at least for its first year, by judging a project proposal rather than a finished body of work \u2013 there’s nothing yet to weigh against anything else.<\/p>\n

That winner will be announced alongside the Main Prize and Newcomer Award on October 08 at a ceremony at the World of Leica in Wetzlar, with all 12 shortlisted series going on show afterwards at the Ernst Leitz Museum until February 04 2027.<\/p>\n

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Women spend the evening near a Soviet-era bus stop in Altynkul village, Kungrad, Uzbekistan 2025. From the series The Aral Sea and the Battered Waters of Central Asia (Image credit: \u00a9 Anush Babajanyan\/LOBA 2026)<\/p>\n

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\u0160umiac, Slovakia 2023. From the series People of \u0160umiac (Image credit: \u00a9 David Sl\u00e1dek\/LOBA 2026)<\/p>\n

Ultimately, whomever wins the Main Prize this October, the real result of this shortlist may simply be a useful, uncomfortable reminder.<\/p>\n

Photography contests aren’t judging photographs in isolation. They’re judging what we, collectively, think photography is for in the first place.<\/p>\n

You might like…<\/p>\n

Looking for competitions to enter? Here are 10 global photo contests now open for entries from July 2026 to January 2027<\/a>. And check out the best Leica cameras<\/a> along with the best Leica M lenses<\/a> for rangefinders and the best Leica SL lenses<\/a> for mirrorless bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leica has unveiled the 12 photographers shortlisted for its 2026 Oskar Barnack Award (LOBA), one of photography’s longest-running…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,1120,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-688466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}