My Planet and Portrait: A Hero of Our Time remain the most popular categories, with almost double the images compared to the other two categories, Top News and Sports.
Among Russian participants, most of the entries were submitted by photo reporters from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Tomsk, Kirov, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg, with a strong emphasis on portrait photography. Foreign entries are dominated by photographers from North Africa and Asia, including Egypt, India and Iran. At the same time, there are also quite a few entrants from Italy, Spain, France, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Bangladesh. Foreign contestants clearly prefer coloured photo series as a way to convey their message.
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Entries can be submitted until February 28 on the contest's website, stenincontest.com, and more than 2,000 works by young photo reporters from 56 countries have already been submitted. The contest is open to photo correspondents from any country aged 18 to 33. This is the only platform in Russia that helps discover new names in international photojournalism and set the quality criteria for documentary photography.
In 2019 the contenders will compete in five categories: Top News, Sport, My Planet, and Portrait: A Hero of Our Time, and Inspiration. The jury will award three winners in every category, as well as the contest's top award, the Grand Prix.
The prize money for this year's first, second and third place winners will be 100,000, 75,000 and 50,000 rubles (approximately $1,500, $1,120 and $750), respectively. The Grand Prix winner will receive 700,000 rubles (approximately $10,470). Another perk of winning is having your work showcased both in Russia and around the world in a travelling exhibition that has become a fixture of the contest and already reached dozens of major cities in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.
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About the contest:
The Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest was launched by Rossiya Segodnya under the aegis of the Russian Commission for UNESCO. Its main goal is to support young photographers and draw public attention to the challenges of modern photojournalism. This contest is a platform for young photographers; talented, empathetic and open-minded, they draw our attention to people and events around us.
In 2019 the general media partners of the contest include the news website Vesti.Ru and the Russian state Rossiya-Kultura TV channel. The international information partners of the contest include Sputnik International Information Agency and Radio, Askanews Information Agency, Independent Media Holding, Notimex News Agency, ANA News Agency, RT channel and website, Shanghai United Media Group (SUMG), China Daily website, PNA news agency, AlYoum AlSabee newspaper and website, The Paper website, Al Mayadeen media network and Renminwang website. The industry partners supporting the contest are the Russian Photo and Photo-study.ru websites, School of Visual Arts, Academy of Photography, the YOung JOurnalists information portal, the Contrastes magazine, the Fotoargenta magazine, the All About Photo website, Cuartoscuro magazine, Delhi Photography Club and PhotON festival as an international partner.