The results of the Humanity Photo Award 2000, the largest
international photo contest in China, have been revealed recently
at the Dongyue Temple, which is also known as the Beijing Folk
Culture Museum.
The 50 winners of "Memories of Mankind" were chosen from Australia,
France, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, the United States
and China, out of more than 20,000 entries from more than 46
countries and regions around the world.
Nine categories of photographs were up for the judgment of the
jury, and a grand folk art exhibition with more than 400 of the
award-winning pictures is currently being held at the Dongyue
Temple and will run until the end of this month.
The nine categories were people and clothing, homes, life and jobs,
celebrations, food and drink, religions, rites of passage and
traditions, and traditional sports and folk games.
A
panel of nine judges looked at the entries, which were all by
members of world-famous photography associations like the World
Press Photo Contest and the Royal Photographic Society of Great
Britain.
The Humanity Photo Award, which was launched in 1998, is the
largest international photo contest in China and is co-sponsored by
the China Folklore Photographic Association, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Ford
Foundation's Beijing Office, says Shen Che, president of the
association.
The award is aimed at promoting the exploration, preservation and
study of rapidly disappearing folk cultures and phenomena by
getting people from all over the world involved in recording the
development and changes of folk cultures.
French photographer Franco Zecchin, first and fourth prize winner,
who has conducted a five-year research project on nomadic
populations all over the world since 1997, said: "Photography can
be a powerful tool in showing the universal value of different folk
cultures."
Zhou Xingli, a first prize winner from China's Heilongjiang
Province, said folk culture was at the root of the tree of human
civilization.
"We folklore photographers should go deeper to see the
sociological, ethnological and anthropological value of this
'root,' as well as the usual aesthetic perspective," he said.
"We should make every effort to preserve it and watch how it grows
in present-day society," Zhou added.
The China Folklore Photographic Association (CFPA) is the largest
independent, non-profit, cultural organization in China with more
than 20,000 members in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province, the
Macao and the Hong Kong special administrative regions, Shen Che
said.
In
the last few decades, preserving and protecting time-honoured
cultural heritages, particularly vanishing cultures such as local
folklore, customs, traditional skills and ancient architecture, had
become an urgent task for nations and some international
organizations such as UNESCO, Shen said.
On
behalf of UNESCO, Noboru Noguchi, UNESCO representative to the
People's Republic of China, Mongolia and the Democratic People's
Republic of Korea, praised Shen and his association at the awarding
ceremony for their contributions to enhancing peaceful co-existence
and cultural understanding between peoples from different parts of
the world with various cultural backgrounds.
"This year's activities are even more significant as they are
contributing to the International Year of Culture and Peace," he
said.
After Beijing, the exhibition will tour China and several Asian
countries before its European tour, which starts in Paris at the
headquarters of UNESCO, and its North American tour, starting from
New York.
(China Daily 10/26/2000)