The International Center of Photography in New York has announced the annual 2010 Infinity award winners, arguably the most important in the world of photography. Among those to be honoured is South African veteran photographer, Peter Magubane.

Magubane will be in illustrious company in New York on the evening of Monday, May 10, when the ICP honours the nine recipients of the 26th annual Infinity awards, the country’s leading awards for excellence in the field of photography. The ICP says it is an opportunity to 'acknowledge...

The International Center of Photography in New York has announced the annual 2010 Infinity award winners, arguably the most important in the world of photography. Among those to be honoured is South African veteran photographer, Peter Magubane.

Magubane will be in illustrious company in New York on the evening of Monday, May 10, when the ICP honours the nine recipients of the 26th annual Infinity awards, the country’s leading awards for excellence in the field of photography. The ICP says it is an opportunity to 'acknowledge some of those image-makers whose work has allowed us to see the world anew, and that enables us to better grasp the richness and diversity of our common humanity'. Praising the winners’ contribution to the photographic medium, ICP Ehrenkranz Director Willis E. Hartshorn says, 'They share a commitment to the overarching power of photography and how it can express what is both enduring and new in the human condition. Whether documenting significant historical and contemporary events, shedding light on the dynamism of unfamiliar cultures, or extending the languages we use to describe and better understand who we are, they have provided us with opportunities to re-grasp and re-envision our world.'

Peter Magubane is to receive the Cornell Capa award (named after the famous photographer and founder of Magnum). The Lifetime Achievement award is being made to famous photo editor John G. Morris. Other winners are Gilbert C. Maurer/Hearst corporation (ICP trustees award); Raphaël Dallaporta (young photographer); Luc Sante (writing);   Looking In: Robert Frank’s 'The Americans' by Sarah Greenough (publication); Lorna Simpson (art); Reza (photojournalism) and 'Gentlemen of Bacongo' by Daniele Tamagni (applied photography).

ICP’s ongoing mission is to present and champion the variety inherent in the photographic experience. The Infinity awards, first presented in 1985, were created to recognize the contributions of influential photographers and emerging young talent. This program attracts an audience of more than 700 prominent guests annually from the photography, art, and fashion worlds. It celebrates an international group of accomplished individuals who are receiving what is widely recognized as the most coveted honour in photography. Recipients are chosen by a jury from submissions compiled by a changing international nominating committee.  

The Lifetime Achievement award and Cornell Capa Award honourees are selected by the ICP board of trustees, president’s council, and senior staff. The Trustees award is periodically given by the board for outstanding contributions to the field. The 2010 selection committee comprised publisher Chris Boot, Carol McCusker of the museum of photographic arts, San Diego, and Peter MacGill, president of the Pace/MacGill gallery in New York.Past winners of the top awards have included Robert Frank, Mary Ellen Mark, Marc Riboud, André Kertész, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Berenice Abbott, Richard Avedon, Harold Evans, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Alexander Liberman, Gordon Parks, Helen Levitt, Annie Leibovitz, Lee Friedlander, William Klein, Susan Meiselas, Roy de Carava, Malick Sidibé, and Karl Lagerfeld.

Peter Magubane was born in 1932 in Vrededorp and grew up in Sophiatown in the suburbs of Johannesburg, South Africa. First published in Drum magazine in 1954, Magubane covered many important political events in the 1950s, including treason trials and demonstrations. After freelancing in London in the early 1960s, he returned to South Africa and worked for the Rand Daily Mail from 1967 until 1980. From 1969 to 1976, Magubane was repeatedly arrested and interrogated for his activities, jailed or kept in solitary confinement for months at a time, and banned from his position at the Rand Daily Mail for five years. In 1976, he was hospitalized after his nose was broken by the police and his house was burnt down. In 1985, he was shot seventeen times at a student’s funeral in Natalspruit.

His coverage of the uprisings in Soweto (June 1976) brought worldwide acclaim and led to a number of international photographic and journalistic awards, including the American National Professional Photographers Association Humanistic award in 1986, in recognition of one of several incidents in which he put his camera aside and intervened to help prevent people from being killed. From 1978 until 1980, Magubane worked as a correspondent for Time magazine, after which time he moved to New York.

Magubane has photographed for several United Nations agencies, including the High Commission for Refugees and UNICEF, and his photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Life, Time, Newsweek, National Geographic, Paris Match, and The Washington Post, among others. His honours include the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism from the University of Missouri (1992) for his lifelong coverage of apartheid, the Robert Capa Award (1986), and Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mother Jones Foundation (1997). He has received honorary doctorate degrees from several universities in South Africa and will be awarded an honorary doctorate from Columbia University in New York in 2010.

This press release was provided courtesy of the Communications Department at the International Center of Photography

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