The identity of the winners of the internationally renowned contest for professional photographers will be announced at the awards ceremony to be held at the Osnabrück Museum of Cultural History on 14 October 2017. On the following day, the city of Osnabrück will open an exhibition of winning and nominated works at the same location. The gallery, with an outstanding selection of quality entries from all nominees, will be available online from 4 September 2017 onwards at www.felix-schoeller-photoaward.com. One new feature of the Felix Schoeller Photo Award will be the People’s Choice Award: from 5 September 2017, the British Journal of Photography will be encouraging its online readers to rate the nominees’ work to choose the winner of the People’s Choice Award. This prize will also be awarded on 14 October 2017.
The jury drew positive conclusions on the quality of this year’s entries, which had grown in number by comparison to the previous year by a further 1,000 or so. The jury bore witness to the extremely high artistic and photographic standards achieved by the entries as a whole. Once again, many of the award winners had previously taken part in renowned international photography prizes and submitted both new and previously recognised entries for the contest, raising the bar even higher to be counted among the best of the best.
2017 marks the first occasion on which the People’s Choice will attract an award, with the contest being run and sponsored by the British Journal of Photography (BJP). Once the list of nominees for the Felix Schoeller Photo Award had been completed, Britain’s oldest and most renowned photographic magazine launched an online voting for its approximately one million followers, who were encouraged across all channels, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to submit their votes for their personal favourites. The winner will enjoy a comprehensive online presentation of his or her work, including an interview in the internationally renowned British Journal of Photography and its associated social media channels. In addition, the BJP will extensively promote the work online, further raising the winner’s profile.
During the period between 15 October 2017 and 25 February 2018, all works by the winner and nominees will be on display as part of the “Winners & Nominees – Felix Schoeller Photo Award 2017” exhibition in the Osnabrück Museum of Cultural History. printed on high-quality Felix Schoeller photo paper and presented in formats of up to 100 × 120 cm in size. “We hope that the exhibition attracts large numbers of visitors, as people with an interest in photography will once again have the opportunity to view the state of the art of international contemporary photography right here in Osnabrück in the highest standards of quality,” said Dr Friederike Texter, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communication at the Felix Schoeller Group.