CEWE PHOTO AWARD

Michel Comte

“The beauty of people lies in their eyes”

Michel Comte

Every year, the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival aims to showcase works that emphasise and highlight the festival’s values even more clearly. In the CEWE Photo Award, the festival has found a partner that lives these values every day and makes them visible with the largest photo competition in the world.

The images submitted not only show the beauty of the world, but above all its vulnerable aspects that are worth protecting. 

In a total of ten categories – People, Landscape, Animals, Architecture & Technology, Nature, Sport, Travel & Culture, Cooking & Food, Hobby & Leisure and Aerial Photography – the incredible variety and internationality of motifs awakens the joy of photography. With more than 600,000 images from over 170 countries – including around 30,000 images from Austria alone – the CEWE Photo Award is the world’s largest photo competition. 

Michel Comte was president of the CEWE Photo Award jury for the first time. The Swiss photographer achieved fame as a fashion photographer. He has worked for Karl Lagerfeld, Armani, Chloé and Versace, among others. A passionate mountaineer and aviator, he focuses in particular on climate change and glacier melt. To this end, he photographs mountain landscapes around the world from open helicopters, while paragliding or climbing, portraying the disappearance of glacial landscapes. Comte has also taken photographs in conflict zones and on behalf of the International Red Cross. His photographs can be seen in museums all over the world.

However, CEWE’s Photo Award is not just for artistic purposes: for every photo submitted, CEWE donated 10 cents to SOS Children’s Villages worldwide.

The exhibition was curated by Michel Comte and produced with the support and expertise of CEWE.