The ESTAÇÃO IMAGEM Photojournalism Award is unique in its genre in Portugal. The award is open to Portuguese photojournalists as well as to those from African countries of Portuguese official language (PALOP) and Galicia (Spain), and foreigners residing in these territories.

The competing award has been launched each year since 2009 and hosted in Viana do Castelo in the last two years with the support of the town council and active engagement of the city mayor José Maria Costa.

 For the selection of the ESTAÇÃO IMAGEM 2016 Viana do Castelo’s award winner as well as for the Photograph of the Year, prize winners in the seven categories, and attribution of the Alto Minho grant, the international jury assessed close to 350 reports in competition. Over the last seven years since its inception, the number of works amounts to more than 4,000 and more than 1,100 photographers have applied for the ESTAÇÃO IMAGEM award at this point.

 The Noroeste Peninsular prize – this year dedicated to ‘The Wine and the Vineyard’ – aims to deepen the bonds between Portugal’s north-west and Galicia and explore some of the realities that are eventually shared across these two regions. The Photograph of the Year is the novelty in this year’s edition – the creation of this particular award was sought to circumvent the many difficulties and constrains that often limit photojournalists in their work.The jury of the ESTAÇÃO IMAGEM 2016’s award was chaired by Aidan Sullivan, vice-president of Getty Images. Other jury members were: João Silva, photojournalist at The New York Times, Cheryl Newman, photography director at Telegraph Magazine, and Laurent Rebous, the photography director of Associated Press for France and Northern Africa.

Throughout the week and running in parallel with the meetings, the awards’ ceremony, and conference held by the jury, the city also hosted a series of events around photography including screening of documentaries and slide-shows. Saliently, we should mention the conference delivered by João Silva at Sá de Miranda Theatre as well as the exhibition “Americans” by Christopher Morris at the Museum of Decorative Arts. The North-American photographer also held a conference where he showed us his work in a slide-show and video authored by him. International photojournalism was salient in slide-shows featuring a selection of photos from major agencies such as Getty Images, France Press, Associated Press, EPA, and The New York Times.

We should also mention the screening of the slide-show “One day in the life of Viana do Castelo” – which is the result of our challenging call for the participation of the local community – and the inaugural exhibition of “Filigree – Tradition’s still what it used to be”, a work awarded in the former year. We can say that these two events highlighted the feeling of engagement and communion with the city of Viana. 

The ESTAÇÃO IMAGEM Award is developed in partnership with the Viana do Castelo Town Council, the Mora Town Council, and Casa da Imprensa. Media partners include RTP, Agência Lusa, Jornal de Notícias, Público, Diário do Minho, and Rádio Alto Minho.