Interview with Lizzy Le Quesne, Czech Press Photo competition

In this week's edition of the arts, Dita Asiedu

From November 16th this year to January 15th 2002, Prague will be hosting an exhibition of photographs made by the Czech Press. A week ago, the Czech Photo Foundation and the Syndicate of Journalists of the Czech Republic were proud to announce the winner of the 7th Czech Press Photo competition. The competition was held under the auspices of the Mayor of Prague, Jan Kasl, and the Minister of Culture, Pavel Dostal and the entries will be displayed for public viewing at the Old Town Hall in Prague.

195 photographers entered the competition with a total of 2148 photographs being submitted. With sixteen categories and over 60 prizes, the international jury had three days to vote. According to Sergej Kivrin, a free-lance photographer for the Los Angeles Times and member of the jury, despite the large number of competition entries, the choice of the winning piece was unanimous and easy.

"Sometimes, it was very difficult to say 'this is better than that' but we saw several pictures about general events in the world and we saw excellent pictures from New York. It is the terrible horrible and most important event of this year, maybe of this century and of course it should be first prize - the Grand Prix - because it is an excellent picture of children who lost their father and its individual life of small people. That is more important than other pictures."