Martin Stranka received the International Photography Award under the Lucie Foundation for his series Beautiful Accidents – Tagree

If someone had told me 15 years ago that we would fly to New York to accept the 1st prize for photography, I would not have believed them. The unimaginable has become a reality. The 19th annual International Photography Awards and Lucie Awards gala ceremony took place in Manhattan under the auspices of the Lucie Foundation — the imaginary Oscars of photography. The IPA and Lucie awards are held in Carnegie Hall in NYC where we flew to and documented the whole journey.

In this 19th year of competition, over 14,000 photographs from 120 countries were assessed by 80 judges from around the world, including gallerists, editors-in-chief, art historians, curators, and other renowned professionals in the field of art. And we bring this IPA trophy to the Czech Republic for the first time ever. It was incredibly humbling to receive the award from those who shape and direct the entire photography industry. To be among such world names in photography was truly an honor and a realization that we are doing something right, yet, we still have everything ahead of us. I am extremely grateful to everyone on this wonderful journey with us.

International Photography AwardsTM is a sister-effort of the Lucie Foundation, a charitable foundation whose mission is to honor master photographers, discover and cultivate emerging talent, and promote the appreciation of photography worldwide. The annual programming of the Lucie Foundation is funded largely through the International Photography Awards, including the signature event, the Lucie Awards held in New York at Carnegie Hall.

It is breathtaking how many world icons of photography have been recognized and honored by this organization. I randomly remember portrait photography icon Annie Leibovitz, world-renowned Czech documentary photographer and Magnum Photos agency member Josef Koudelka, Canadian director and photographer Joey Lawrence (aka Joey L.), American fashion and celebrity photographer Roxanne Lowit, German publisher and contemporary art collector Benedikt Taschen or Dutch portrait photographer Erwin Olaf. I received the award for the series Beautiful Accidents.

The Beautiful Accidents series elaborates on this narrative and maps the narrow line between aesthetic beauty and the fateful event. These deliberately visually unfinished stories seek the boundary between visual appeal and a dramatic scene that can change human life in an instant. The attempt is to find out to what extent can be aestheticized the accident that the viewer witnesses and thus becomes a part of it.