News

Press Conference CPP 010

The winning photographs were first introduced at a press conference at the Prague Magistrate at 10 am. The jury and several award winners attended – including Martin Bandzak (Photograph of the Year) and Roman Vondrous (Grant of Prague)
 

Journalists at the press conference Czech Press Photo 2010

Start of the conference with projection of the Photograph of the Year
 

Martin Bandzak under his winning photograph

CPP organiser Daniela Mrazkova interviews Martin Bandzak

The first prize in the General News category (Life after the earthquake in Haiti, January 2010) was won by Jarmila Kovarikova. “Photographs speak more than words...,” she said at the press conference. The night before the press conference she returned from a photographic trip to Africa.
 

Frantisek Ortmann won in the People in the News category with his picture of the captain of the Czech ice hockey team, Tomas Rolinek, with the World Cup winners’ cup on the front window of a bus moving through crowds of fans towards the Old Town Square in Prague. “I was surrounded by crowds of people, police and pickpockets for whom these crowd scenes are ideal. The bus carrying the ice hockey players broke suddenly and Rolinek fell forward on the window. I don’t know if he later thought it was funny, or what it was supposed to mean, but the fact is that the team must have drunk a bit...”
 

Stanislav Krupar from Reflex won the Nature and Environment category (Fires in Russia). After the press conference he found an abode in the lift door, which wasn’t used at the time.
 

Toman Vondrous from CTK received the Grant of Prague and became (just as other successful photographers) the focus of television crews’ attention.

Roman Vondrous from CTK in detail
 

The overall winner of CPP 2010, Martin Bandzak, was the most popular photographer with the press. He received a phone call from the jury of CPP on Sunday night when he returned from Cambodia where is based, to Bratislava for a few days. “What luck,” he commented the happy event. “I am hardly ever in Bratislava these days, I am abroad ninety percent of the time...” We will bring you a more detailed report of the winning photograph soon. Meanwhile we can reveal that the photograph was taken with a Canon (in colour, then converted to black and white). Martin Bandzak is the founder of humanitarian organisation Magna – Children in need, where he works as a photographer and manager.

Pictures Oleg Homola