About the competition

Are you a young photographer and have a photo to submit? UN-Habitat and the Laboratory of Architecture and Environmental Design of Biskra University call on young photographers and students worldwide to submit photographs documenting their communities’ contributions to furthering the quality of life in cities and displaying the connections between urban and rural areas as well as the relations between cities and their regions.

The topic of the competition is “valuing our communities, cities and regions”.

Details

Submission deadline: 31 March 2021

Organizers: UN-HABITAT & Biskra University

Public voting on the entries: April 2021

Announcement of winning photos: May 2021

Number of winning photos: 5 (one per thematic area)

Benefits

• Participation is free of charge.
• Winning photos will be featured in an online public show on both UN-Habitat and LaCoMoFA social media and digital platforms (UN-Habitat Urban Policy Platform).
• Selected photos will be presented in upcoming publications of UN-Habitat and LaCoMoFa. Photo authors will receive full acknowledgment in the publication.
• Winners will receive a certificate from the organizing partners.

Who can participate?

• Young photographers and students in connection to the theme of the contest from all over the world are welcome to apply.
• Participants should be aged between 18-35 years.

How to Participate?

Young entrants can submit their entries online OR via email to the organizers as per the directions below.

Send a high-resolution photo (s) and the story behind it to unhabitat-url@un.org and cc lacomofa@univ-biskra.dz  along with your full name and contact information. Remember to write in the email subject line “Valuing our communities’ photo competition”.

Alternatively, you can also submit your photos by filling out this Photo Contest Entry Form.

Guidance for making entries

• The photo competition has FIVE thematic categories open for photo submissions.
• Participants can enter in one of the five thematic areas. Some examples for potential subjects that exemplify the thematic category are provided below (see Annex).
• Participants are allowed five entries (they can submit 5 photos per submission (max.), therefore up to 5 photos if submitting five entries).
• Submit the story behind your photo too. Each photo should have a caption of 100-word length  (English, French or Spanish).

 Please consider the following guiding questions for your caption:

• How does this photo highlight the community’s contribution to the city and region’s socio-cultural values, economic values, environmental values, innovation values, and/or communities’ actions in cities and regions?
• How the communities and/or places in this photo are connected to nearby regions, rural communities and areas?
• How the communities and/or places in this photo are central to local and community responses in the existence of social-cultural, environmental and economic challenges (e.g. Covid-19, climate and inequality).
• Mention the thematic entry area and specify the location and date on which the photograph was taken.
• Images should be submitted in JPEG or TIFF in high resolution (900 px wide, 72 dpi).
• Participants will receive an email confirming the reception of their entries at the end.

Thematic Areas include:

• Communities’ contribution to the city and region’s social-cultural values
• Communities’ contribution to the city and region’s economic values
• Communities’ contribution to the city and region’s environmental values
• Communities’ contribution to the city and region’s innovative values
• Communities’ actions in cities and regions

Evaluation criteria

A joint panel consisting of members of the architecture department of Biskra University and UN-Habitat will judge the entries based on composition, technical excellence, originality, responsiveness to the theme, and the whole impact. Next to the jury, public voting also constitutes selection decision-making.

Visit the website of UN-HABITAT for more information.