Global Peace Photography Award 2022
 

THE Global Peace Photo Award (TGPPA) recognises 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 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 conflicts and crises, wars and catastrophes, professional awards do not normally highlight what other things humans are capable of.

The award, launched in 2013 as the Alfred Fried Photography Award, fills this gap.

It honours images that tell about successes rather than failures, of empathy rather than hatred, of things worth preserving rather than destroying, of encouragement rather than agony and of the human right to beauty.

The award for the best photo of peace is not an award for escapism, wildflower meadows and sunsets or an award for the sweetest smile.

It is an award that encourages professional photographers to visualise 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 award, based on the Nobel Peace Award, celebrates the ability of humans to be caring and supportive — inspired by Austrian Nobel Peace Laureates 1911 Alfred Fried and Tobias Asser, it celebrates all kinds of pacifism and disarmament of individuals and society as a whole.

Fried was an Austrian Jewish pacifist, publicist, journalist, co-founder of the German peace movement and a supporter of Esperanto, while Asser, a Dutch lawyer, was awarded the prize for establishing the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

The TGPPA international jury met on July 8 2022 and chose five shortlisted entries which will be awarded the Alfred Fried Peace Medal. 

Out of these five winners the overall winning Peace Image of the Year will be chosen.

The winning image will be on display for a year at the Austrian parliament and will be included in the permanent art collection of the Austrian parliament.

A selection of the best images is currently on display in Tulln, Austria, and Celje, Slovenia. The exhibitions are part of the Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo which will be open until October 16 2022.

It is the largest outdoor photography festival in Europe. Entry is free.
The festival presents themes of a strongly humanist orientation.

Submissions came from 115 countries, most of them from China followed by Russia, India, the US, Iran, Germany and Italy. Here we offer a sneak preview of some of the images.