The shortlist of the 2019 Andrei Stenin International Press Photo Contest was announced on June 16 after the judges browsed through 6000 entries, submitted from 80 countries.

Those with accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Russia’s VK and China’s Weibo social networks have until July 31 to choose the best of the best at stenincontest.com.

The results of the online vote will be announced on August 1, with the winning photographer to be singled out by the organizers.

“The number of people who appreciate photography grows every year, and the audience is becoming more selective. What they want to see is not just a colorful image, but rather the story behind it,” Oksana Oleinik, curator of the Andrei Stenin Contest and head of the Visual Projects Service at Rossiya Segodnya news agency, said.

The online vote always creates intrigue – will the internet users make the same choice as the professional jury?

The winners of the Andrei Stenin Contest, selected by the professional jury, which includes photographers from Time magazine, the New York Times, and other outlets, will be named during a gala ceremony in Moscow in September. The contest’s photo exhibition will then emerge on its already traditional world tour.

Rossiya Segodnya hosts the competition every year to commemorate Andrei Stenin – one of its best military photographers, who killed by shelling from Kiev forces on August 6, 2014, while covering the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The contest is endorsed by UNESCO and the International Red Cross Committee (IRCC), as well as top international photo and media groups.

The Grand Prix of the Andrei Stenin Contest in 2018 was won by Russia’s Alyona Kochetkova for the dramatic photo story of her fight against cancer. The first prizes in other categories went to photographers from Iraq, Iran, Italy, Israel, and other countries.

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