On 1st October 2018 the Watch Photo Awards started a new month of competition open to all watch fans with a passion for photography with a new theme: Black.
The closing date for this final competition is 20th October 2018. The selected photos will be exhibited at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva from 31st October.
The Watch Photo Awards, why?
Photographic competitions have been around for a long time, and watch awards are dominated by the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. But until now, there has never been a watch photography competition with an international dimension, open to the general public. We have attempted to remedy this omission by giving mechanical watch lovers a platform for them to photograph their watch, share it on watch-photo-awards.com, and maybe have it selected by the jury for publication by media partners, and be featured in an exhibition at the end of the year.
Who can take part in the Watch Photo Awards?
Everyone (almost): anyone who owns a mechanical watch (or, for women, quartz) is invited to shoot a photo on the theme of the month, and upload it to watch-photo-awards.com (WPA). The theme for the month of October is "black". Every month, from May to October, there will be a new theme. At the end of each month, the jury selects the ten photos that best fulfil the competition criteria: creativity, technical proficiency and relevance to the theme. All ten photos will be published on WPA and by the event’s media partners, beginning of course with WorldTempus and GMT Magazine. The public will then be invited to vote on the ten photos, and the one with the most votes will be declared the winner. The winning photographer will receive a voucher for a weekend for two in a 5-star hotel in Geneva. For October, it’s Le Richemond Hotel. At the end of the six months, all of the selected photos will be exhibited in the Geneva Museum of Art and History, at the exhibition for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève. The creators of the 60 photos will be invited to the opening of the WPA exhibition in Geneva. Depending on the media partners, there may be an opportunity for the exhibition to travel to other cities afterwards.
An illustrated history of watches
Once the 2018 WPA is over, it will be possible to search all the photos entered, by brand and by theme. Above and beyond the cultural and artistic dimension of this initiative, which is intended to convey the photographers’ enthusiasm for their favourite watches, the idea is also to create the first virtual museum of watch photography. As part of this long-term, interactive project, the public will be invited to make their own contributions to the history of watchmaking. The rules, prizes, media partners and biographies of the jury members are available on watch-photo-awards.com.
