The 50 winners of "Memories of Mankind" were chosen from Australia, France, Hungary, Israel, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, the United States and China, out of more than 20,000 entries from more than 46 countries and regions around the world.

Nine categories of photographs were up for the judgment of the jury, and a grand folk art exhibition with more than 400 of the award-winning pictures is currently being held at the Dongyue Temple and will run until the end of this month.

The nine categories were people and clothing, homes, life and jobs, celebrations, food and drink, religions, rites of passage and traditions, and traditional sports and folk games.

A panel of nine judges looked at the entries, which were all by members of world-famous photography associations like the World Press Photo Contest and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain.

The Humanity Photo Award, which was launched in 1998, is the largest international photo contest in China and is co-sponsored by the China Folklore Photographic Association, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and Ford Foundation's Beijing Office, says Shen Che, president of the association.

The award is aimed at promoting the exploration, preservation and study of rapidly disappearing folk cultures and phenomena by getting people from all over the world involved in recording the development and changes of folk cultures.

French photographer Franco Zecchin, first and fourth prize winner, who has conducted a five-year research project on nomadic populations all over the world since 1997, said: "Photography can be a powerful tool in showing the universal value of different folk cultures."

Zhou Xingli, a first prize winner from China's Heilongjiang Province, said folk culture was at the root of the tree of human civilization.

"We folklore photographers should go deeper to see the sociological, ethnological and anthropological value of this 'root,' as well as the usual aesthetic perspective," he said.

"We should make every effort to preserve it and watch how it grows in present-day society," Zhou added.

The China Folklore Photographic Association (CFPA) is the largest independent, non-profit, cultural organization in China with more than 20,000 members in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan Province, the Macao and the Hong Kong special administrative regions, Shen Che said.

In the last few decades, preserving and protecting time-honoured cultural heritages, particularly vanishing cultures such as local folklore, customs, traditional skills and ancient architecture, had become an urgent task for nations and some international organizations such as UNESCO, Shen said.

On behalf of UNESCO, Noboru Noguchi, UNESCO representative to the People's Republic of China, Mongolia and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, praised Shen and his association at the awarding ceremony for their contributions to enhancing peaceful co-existence and cultural understanding between peoples from different parts of the world with various cultural backgrounds.

"This year's activities are even more significant as they are contributing to the International Year of Culture and Peace," he said.

After Beijing, the exhibition will tour China and several Asian countries before its European tour, which starts in Paris at the headquarters of UNESCO, and its North American tour, starting from New York.

(China Daily 10/26/2000)