Pictures of the Year International (POYi) is a

professional development Professional development is learning to earn or maintain professional credentials such as academic degrees to formal coursework, attending conferences, and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. It has been described as intensiv ...

program for

visual journalists The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system (the retina containing photoreceptor cells, the optic nerve, the optic tract and the visual cortex) which gives organisms the sense of sight (the ...

run on a non-profit basis by the

Missouri School of Journalism The Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri in Columbia is one of the oldest formal journalism schools in the world. The school provides academic education and practical training in all areas of journalism and strategic comm ...

's Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. POYi began as an annual competition for

photojournalism Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (suc ...

in 1944. POYi promotes the work of documentary photographers and magazine, newspaper, and freelance photojournalists. POYi's projects have included the Pictures of the Year International Competition, an annual contest for documentary photographers and photojournalists; career-development symposiums and visual workshops for professionals and college students; Visions of Excellence, a series of exhibitions of award-winning photography; and the POYi Archive, comprising over 38,000 historic photographs.

Pictures of the Year International Competition

The Pictures of the Year International Competition is for

documentary photography Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life. It is typically undertaken as professional pho ...

, visual editing, and online multimedia. Each year more than 52,000 works are submitted to the contest by photojournalists from 71 nation. During three weeks of judging, a panel of 17

selects 240 winners. Category topics include news, sports and portraits. The three-week review is set in a public forum, with live

webcast A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...

ing.

Education and award programs

POYi provides educational and

career development Career Development or Career Development Planning refers to the process an individual may undergo to evolve their occupational status. It is the process of making decisions for long term learning, to align personal needs of physical or psychologica ...

symposiums for photojournalists, which include lectures, workshops, one-on-one mentoring and portfolio reviews. POYi has held seminars in cities including Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New Orleans, Chicago and San Francisco.

Visions of Excellence

POYi develops exhibitions that are displayed in galleries, museums, libraries, and schools, entitled Visions of Excellence. POYi also creates themed exhibitions culled from the POYi Archive on topics such as the

presidency of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

, the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a multi ...

, and

African-American history African-American history began with the arrival of Africans to North America in the 16th and 17th centuries. Former Spanish slaves who had been freed by Francis Drake arrived aboard the Golden Hind at New Albion in California in 1579. The ...

. POYi exhibits have been displayed in the

Newseum The Newseum was an American museum dedicated to news and journalism that promoted free expression and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, while tracing the evolution of communication. The purpose of the museum, funded by the ...

in Washington, D.C., the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, the International Photo Festival in Korea, the LOOK3 Charlottesville Festival of the Photograph in Virginia, and the Louisiana State Museum for PhotoNOLA in New Orleans.

Emerging Vision Incentive

POYi at one time conducted an annual Emerging Vision Incentive program that provided $10,000 in funding for aspiring or early-career photojournalists to produce in-depth documentary projects that target a specific social issue.

POYi Archive

In 2008, POYi and the University of Missouri's School of Information Science and Learning Technologies began a collaborative project to create a Web platform to host the digital archive of all the winning photographs in POYi's collection. The Archive was launched in September 2008 and uses the Omeka

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

. The POYi Archive contains more than 40,000 photographs.

History

Pictures of the Year International began as a news photography contest in the spring of 1944 when University of Missouri professor Clifton C. Edom and his wife, Vi, founded the First Annual Fifty-Print Exhibition contest. Its stated purpose was "to pay tribute to those press photographers and newspapers which, despite tremendous war-time difficulties, are doing a splendid job; to provide an opportunity for photographers of the nation to meet in open competition; and to compile and preserve ... a collection of the best in current, home-front press pictures." During that first year of the contest, 60 photographers entered 223 prints. In 1945 the Edoms also founded the College Photographer of the Year contest, and in 1949 they launched the Missouri Photo Workshop. In 1948, following a decision to invite magazine photographers to participate, the Fifty-Print Exhibition Contest became the "ews Pictures of the Year Contest. Then, in 1957, the University of Missouri and the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) merged their respective contests. Through this partnership, Pictures of the Year continued until 2001 when NPPA and Missouri parted ways. POYi is now administered by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. Guided by former directors Angus McDougall, Bill Kuykendall, and David Rees, the scope of Pictures of the Year changed dramatically between the 1970s and 2000. The number of entered images increased to tens of thousands, and in 2001 Pictures of the Year became an international program — Pictures of the Year International. In 2006, POYi became a program of the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and named Rick Shaw as its full-time director.

References

External links

Pictures of the Year InternationalPictures of the Year International ArchiveDonald W. Reynolds Journalism InstituteMissouri School of JournalismCollege Photographer of the YearMissouri Photo WorkshopOmekaUniversity of Missouri's School of Information Science and Learning Technologies
Photojournalism organizations Photojournalism awards University of Missouri {{Portal bar, Arts, Visual arts