Global Peace Photo Award

@ Michel Bouvet

The Global Peace Photo Award recognizes and promotes photographers from all over the world whose pictures capture human efforts towards a peaceful world and the quest for beauty and goodness in our lives. The award goes to those photographs that best express the idea that our future lies in peaceful coexistence.

Inner peace, peaceful coexistence, peace within a community, peace between nations, international policy of peace – what do we associate with all this? As many important photography awards focus on the conflicts and crises, the wars and catastrophes on our planet, professional awards do not normally highlight what other things humans are capable of. The Global Peace Photo Award, launched in 2013 as the Alfred Fried Photography Award, fills this gap: it shows the various facets of peacefulness and completes the image of humans by adding their good sides. It honors the pictures which tell about successes rather than failures; of empathy rather than hatred; of things worth preserving rather than destruction; of encouragement rather than agony; and of the human right to beauty.

The Global Peace Photo Award for the best photo of peace is not an award for escapism, wildflower meadows and sunsets or an award for the sweetest smile, nor does it criticize the informative reportage photography which by nature depicts the misery of our world. It is, however, an award which encourages professional photographers to visualize on the highest level what inspires hope: from private efforts to support refugees to meaningful development aid; from pictures of personal happiness to examples of community spirit; from fighting poverty to a successful nature conservation project; from permitted withdrawal to peaceful niches to an enthusiastic rebellion against injustice; from important advances in medicine and in environmental protection to the reconstruction of cities in ruins. The Global Peace Photo Award celebrates the ability of humans to be caring and supportive. Inspired by Nobel Peace Laureates 1911 Alfred Fried and Tobias Asser, it celebrates all kinds of pacifism and disarmament of individuals and society as a whole.

The top five listed photographers will be awarded the Alfred Fried Peace Medal. The Peace Image of the Year will receive 10,000 Euros.

The Children’s Peace Image of the Year for children under the age of 14 will be honoured with the Alfred Fried Peace Medal and a cash price of € 1,000 sponsored by the Vienna Insurance Group. 

Text © Peter-Matthias Gaede