“After careful consideration, we found it imperative to disqualify the photographer from the contest. The principle of World Press Photo is to promote high standards in photojournalism. Therefore, we must maintain the integrity of our organization even when the outcome is regrettable.” -Michiel Munneke, managing director of World Press Photo

Lens, PetaPixel, and BJP all have good coverage of the latest photo manipulation scandal in photojournalism: World Press Photo has disqualified Stepan Rudik, 3rd place Sports Features in the 2010 contest, for an ethics violation. Rudik removed an element of a picture (see the slideshow above) in violation of World Press Photo contest regulations against image alteration, specifically this rule: “The content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed.” The object seems to stem from the removal of a person’s foot from the background of the picture, which Rudik defended to the BJP, saying, “the photograph I submitted to the contest is a crop, and the retouched detail is the foot of a man which appears on the original photograph, but who is not a subject of the image submitted to the contest.”

I’ve got to echo Asim Rafiqui: What a laughable extreme crop and toning job. Color and tilt correction in photoshop is one thing, moody vignetting in photoshop is another, but this is a whole new level of turning a crap photo into something entirely different. Wow. This, rather than the offending foot, is the bigger problem for the credibility of photojournalism.

Our monthly posting of dvafoto’s deadline calendar. The calendar can be accessed in a web browser, or with ical or xml applications. If you know of any upcoming deadlines not on the list, please send them to deadlines@dvafoto.com or use the submissions page.

Citing difficulty experienced by those trying to upload their entries, Worldpress Photo has extended the 2010 contest deadline to Jan. 17.

Our calendar has been updated.

Also, in speaking with others, it seems like twitter would be a natural way to keep people informed about deadlines. We’ve begun using the #photocalendar hashtag (rss for #photocalendar)

We’re going to start posting our deadline calendar on a monthly basis in the interest of making it more visible. The calendar can be accessed in a web browser, or with ical or xml applications. If you know of any upcoming deadlines not on the list, please send them to deadlines@dvafoto.com.

SocialDocumentary.net has announced the winners in the site’s “Documenting the Global Recession” contest. Tomasz Tomaszewski’s story “Hades?,” a story documenting widespread loss of industry and jobs in Poland, took the top prize with honorable mentions going to Khaled Hasan, Michael McElroy, and Shiho Fukada, and the People’s Choice awards going to Matt Eich and David Wells. Lots of great work to see behind those links, but I’m especially interested in the contest being used as a way to generate interest in work addressing the economy. We’ve written previously about tired images of financial crises and the difficulty of photographing something as nebulous and abstract as a recession related to complex financial derivatives. These stories recognized in SocialDocumentary.net’s contest humanize complicated international financial issues from a deeply engaged and emotional perspective. Definitely worth a look.

Just got recent word that two photocontests that were to be closing on December 1st have been extended to Monday December 7th.

Socialdocumentary.net’s “Crisis & Opportunity: Documenting the Global Recession” ($35 entry for a series)

The 2010 Anthropographia Award for Human Rights and Photography (Multimedia and stills, $30/series)

As always you can visit Dvafoto’s Deadline Calendar for a roundup of upcoming deadlines on grants and awards. (It is also available as a rss feed and is able to be synced with your own calendar software, but I can’t figure out how to link those here. It is also listed on the bottom of our sidebar over on the right–> Update by Scott: And it’s at the top of this post.). I have a few more listings to add this evening that have come across my radar recently, so check back later. Feel free to send Scott or I your suggestions on items to add to the list if you come across something worthy that we haven’t put up. Happy editing!

The Atlanta Photojournalism Contest deadline has been pushed back to Friday, Nov. 20, 2009 at 11:55pm US Eastern time.

[I held off on posting this, thinking we wouldn't be adding much to the discussion...but after a week or so, there still hasn't been much mention of organizations working to change the demographics of the photography industry]

There are a lot of white faces at all levels in the photography industry: in the editorial offices, in the business offices, behind the cameras, and in front of the cameras (well, in photojournalism it’s often dark suffering faces in front of the cameras, but that’s another conversation; rarely do black models feature prominently in fashion magazines, for instance.). What started as an observation at Reciprocity Failure turned into an incendiary accusation and “contest” at Duckrabbit and then blossomed into a conversation in the photography blog echo chamber. Prison Photography, Politics, Theory & Photography, APhotoADay, Conscientious, Photo Business News & Forum, and APhotoEditor all weighed in, and I’m sure there were others. Duckrabbit’s now added more fire to the flame…. Some of the best discussion I’ve seen on the topic occurred on lightstalkers and in APhotoEditor’s comments (though APE’s discussion got a little out of hand and comments have since been closed). I was also interested to read John Edwin Mason’s perspective about the lack of diversity at the just-finished Look3 festival in Charlottesville. This is a conversation that needs to happen. Photo District News started out as the target of the accusations of passive racism, and they have responded in the PDNPulse post “On Lack of Diversity in Photography, and in PDN.”

As some have pointed out, this is a problem far more pervasive than the jury for PDN’s Photo Annual. Looking at the jury for this year’s POYi, for instance, or the names of the BOP judges, the contests are controlled, primarily by white people (update June 23: thanks to a reader for pointing out that BOP counts a few African-Americans and latinos among their judges). World Press Photo, on the other hand, boasts a remarkably diverse roster of jurors. Here, I should say that I do not mean to impugn any of these talented judges or these contests; the work they reward is often well-deserving and the lack of the diversity, I think, indicates not a pernicious white supremacist power grab, but rather a passive exclusion of people of color endemic to the European and American mass media industry. That’s still a significant hurdle, but perhaps it’s better than it could be. Also, there’s a raft of black media organizations (old list, found in a suspect comment in APhotoEditor’s discussion), and I don’t want to disparage their efforts by suggesting the western media is only white. That list, too, suggests that the majority-white media world does not fill the market need for black Americans, and one suspects it doesn’t for other minorities in the US, either. That isn’t necessarily a problem either; media perhaps shouldn’t be all things to all people, and a multiplicity of publications aimed at varied audiences begets a broader and better perspective on the world than would a few magazines aimed at “the masses.”

The simple fact is that there needs to be more diversity throughout the photo industry at all levels. Programs such as the Angkor Photography Festival’s free workshops for young Asian photographers, the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (interview about the workshop), Aina (a nonprofit geared toward creating a well-trained independent local media in Afghanistan; interview about the workshop), the Gordon Parks Center for Culture and Diversity (their photo contest deadline is today, by the way), the Young Photographer in the Caucusus Award (deadline June 15), and minority journalism programs and professional organizations (yes, they do matter!), begin to address the need for an entry point to photography to those from different backgrounds than the middle class white males dominating the industry. Programs such as Women in Photojournalism or the Photobetty collective (sadly, now seemingly defunct) begin to address gender disparity in photography. Organizations such as Majority World exhibitions such as ICP’s Snap Judgments, and blogs such as Asian Photography Blog, begin to show the world as viewed and photographed by its many cultures. And grant competitions such as National Geographic’s All Roads Photography Program begin the process of rewarding high-caliber photography by indigenous photographers. But this is only a beginning.

I know plenty of people are following our dvafoto Deadline Calendar, which you can always find on the right-hand column on our site. I just wanted to send out a reminder that a number of popular grants and contests are coming due, because they definitely caught me off guard.

First, the ever-popular Emerging Photographer Grant for 2009 sponsored by David Alan Harvey through his online Burn Magazine along with Magnum. This is due Wednesday, April 1 via online submission with Photoshelter.

Also two big European awards from manufacturers are due now: the Linhof Young Photographer Award has a postmark date of Tuesday March 31 and the Hasselblad Masters Awards (with a handy ‘up and coming’ category) has an online submission due Wednesday April 1. All of these have free entry.

Lastly Hey Hot Shot’s next entry period is due May 1st, online submission for $60.

So finish your edits. There are more prizes down the line, be sure to keep your eyes on the calendar which we’ll update when we can with the prizes and grants that we’re interested in. Feel free to email us suggestions for things we’re missing and we’ll work on sharing them too.

UPDATE: Since posting this earlier I’ve found a few more things that are happening this week: Px3: Prix de la Photographie Paris has apparently extended their deadline until Tuesday March 31, with student and pro categories. Also you can submit for exhibitions at two major photojournalism festivals: Visa Pour L’Image is due Friday April 3 and The Noorderlicht International Photofestival has submissions due Saturday April 4. Good luck!

I’ve been looking a little bit at the POYi 66 winners as the results come in. Congrats to all (and those who remembered to get your entries done on time!), especially friends Kevin German and Eric Kayne.

So far one story has really grabbed me and shook me, the winner in the ‘Newspaper Issue Reporting Picture Story’ category: A Dark Addiction. It appears to be part of this package from The Washington Post, which credits ’staff photographer Andrea Bruce’. Otherwise, I don’t know who took these pictures.

Strong images, incredible story, incredible access. This does a terrific job of bringing to light an issue (drug addiction in mining towns) that I hadn’t heard of or thought of before, and does so in a highly personal and individually-engaged way. Very affecting, I’m glad this got recognized and gave me a chance to see the pictures and learn more about this story. What contests are all about, I guess … recognizing the best projects and pictures and giving them a wider audience. Nice to see it working so well after all of the whining about World Press Photo..

update (by Scott on Feb. 27, 2009): The photographer is, indeed, Andrea Bruce of the Washington Post, as confirmed by her 3rd place win in POYi’s Newspaper Photographer of the Year category.