The jury, made up of professional photographers and representatives of entities committed to more sustainable development, will select the winner of the Foundation's Environmental Photography Award as well as the winners for the three categories of the contest.
Appointed in October 2019 as Vice-President & CEO of the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Olivier Wenden has previously served as Executive Director for 5 years.
Wenden actively participated in the international development of the Foundation and the definition of its fundraising strategy, while strengthening the network of partners. Before joining the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, Wenden worked for the Parliament of Monaco as chief of staff and international affairs and communication advisor (2007-2013). He also served as chargé de mission for the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Monaco (2013-2014). He graduated from Sciences Po Bordeaux with honours and has a Master 2 Degree in international projects management (Sorbonne Nouvelle, University of Paris).
For over 40 years, Ragnar Axelsson, A.K.A. Rax, has been photographing the people, animals, and landscape of the most remote regions of the Arctic, including Iceland, Siberia, and Greenland. In stark black-and-white images, he captures the elemental, human experience of nature at the edge of the liveable world, making visible the extraordinary relationships between the people of the Arctic and their extreme environment – relationships now being altered in profound and complex ways by the unprecedented changes in climate.
A photojournalist at Morgunbladid since 1976, his photographs have been featured in LIFE, Newsweek, Stern, GEO, National Geographic, Time, and Polka, and have been exhibited widely.
Ragnar has published 7 books in various international editions. Andlit Nordursins (The Face of The North), was published in 2016, with a foreword by Mary Ellen Mark, and won the 2016 Icelandic Literary Prize for non-fiction.
Other awards for Ragnar’s work include numerous Icelandic Photojournalist Awards; The Leica Oskar Barnack Award (Honorable Mention); The Grand Prize, Photo de Mer, Vannes; and Iceland’s highest honor, the Order of the Falcon, Knight’s Cross.
Ragnar is currently working on a 3-year project documenting people’s lives in all 8 countries of the Arctic.
Laurent Ballesta is a French photographer from Montpellier. He is the author of 13 photography books dedicated to underwater wildlife. Cofounder of Andromède Oceanology since 2000, he has been leading major expeditions for the past 10 years. His Gombessa Expeditions gather 3 emblematic values: a scientific mystery, a diving challenge and the promise of unique world first images. From the first pictures of the coelacanth taken by a diver at 120 meters deep, to the hunts of the 700 sharks of Fakarava at night and the deepest and longest dive in Antarctica, Laurent illustrates the underwater world with a naturalist and artistic point of view.
In the summer 2019 he did a world first by successfully combining offshore saturation living systems with the technics of autonomous rebreather diving. For 28 days Laurent and 3 other divers lived in a 5 square meters pressurized chamber and dove daily in the mesophotic zone, between 60 and 140 meters deep with no limit of time between Marseille and Monaco. There, they were able to illustrate targeted ecosystems and put together unique scientific protocols.
Anthony BOIRA is originally from the Ardèche, in France. He began his professional career as Project Director at Capgemini in the South-East. In 2004, he left on a consulting mission for clients in Monaco.
After two years he decided to become self-employed and created SAM Avangarde in 2006. Originally an IT services company, the company developed around new areas of expertise (consulting, cyber security, infrastructure and network, cloud, facilities management, software engineering) and became Monaco Informatique Service in the Principality in 2013 with 60 employees.
Avangarde remains the French brand of the Monegasque entity. Anthony BOIRA is the Managing Director of the company, which has evolved as a Digital Service Company (ESN). In 2019, the company becomes Monaco Digital to mark its ever-increasing commitment to supporting the Principality's digital transformation. A strong partnership is being established with the Monaco Government, which has a stake in the company's capital. Today, Anthony BOIRA is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Monaco Digital, surrounded by 210 employees.
Nick Danziger is one of the world’s most renowned photojournalists. Much of his life has been dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times in best-selling books, and in award-winning documentaries and photography. He has won numerous awards for his outstanding work, amongst them is an Honorary Fellowship awarded by the Royal Photographic Society, and the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award in recognition of raising public understanding of contemporary social, political and environmental issues through documentary films and photography. He has also won the World Press Photo 1st prize in the single portrait category. His photographs have been published internationally and are part of several museum collections.
Frederick Dharshie Wissah is a former runway/commercial model and also a self-taught humanitarian/documentary/human-interest photographer based in Nairobi, Kenya. He is driven by the great desire and passion to tell stories through his photography, which he simply fell in love with.
Frederick Dharshie Wissah is a muiltple award winning photographer both locally, in Kenya, and internationally. His work has been featured on Forbes, National Geographical-NatGeo, The New York times, The Guardian, The Sun, just to name a few.
He is the founder of a charity group known as "SOULS OF CHARITY INITIATIVE" and their main purpose is to give back to the society . The group shares the little resources they have, their time and energy with the needy in the Society.
Daisy Gilardini is a conservation photographer who specializes in the Polar Regions, with a particular emphasis on Antarctic wildlife and North American bears. She is from Switzerland originally, and is now based in Vancouver, Canada.
She fell in love with Antarctica during her first trip there in 1997. She has since devoted most of her time to photographing the Polar Regions. In 23 years of polar exploration, she has joined more than 90 expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic. Among her accomplishments, she has skied the final degree to the North Pole.
She is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP) and the SeaLegacy Collective, a fellow of the New York-based Explorers Club, and a member of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
She represents a number of prominent, industry-leading brands in the photography field. She is an Ambassador for the following companies Nikon (Switzerland), Gitzo, Lowepro, Eizo, SanDisk and WesternDigital.
Daisy’s images have been published internationally in leading magazines such as National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Canadian Geographic, Nature’s Best and Outdoor Photography. Her images have also been used by high-profile NGOs such as Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, among others.
Since 2018, she has been a photographer in residence with Canadian Geographic and she has been nominated Greenpeace Antarctic Ambassador.
Her work has been recognized by some of the world’s most prestigious photography awards, including BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year, Travel Photography of the Year and the Nature’s Best Windland Smith Rice International Awards.
Her childhood passion for the natural world has evolved into a lifelong commitment to spread the message of conservation and the need to preserve what's left of the world’s remaining wild places.
Jean-Michel Krief has been a photographer for more than 20 years, committed to the preservation of tropical forests and their wildlife. The heart of his work focuses on great apes and particularly chimpanzees. His work bears witness to the beauty, strength and vitality of tropical forests and above all it captures the intensity of the gaze of our closest relatives.
Together with his wife Sabrina, a professor at the National Museum of Natural History, he founded the Sebitoli Chimpanzee Project in Uganda, with the aim of studying and protecting chimpanzees in their natural environment in harmony with the local population.
He has collaborated with many magazines (Paris-Match, Terre Sauvage, Figaro Magazine, VSD...). In 2019, his exhibition "Chimpanzees, the Lords of the Jungle" in partnership with the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation is a great success in Monaco and at the Montier en Der International Animal Photography Festival.
Lisa Samford left a career in journalism to become a documentary filmmaker, specializing in difficult and remote expedition projects. She has filmed across five continents on a diverse collection of projects exploring topics ranging from violent crime, espionage, and ethnographic/scientific exploration to intimate portraits of author Wallace Stegner and conservation pioneer Mardy Murie. Joining the ranks of the urban refugee, Samford returned to her native Wyoming to raise her son with paleontologist Wallace Ulrich. Executive Director of the internationally renowned Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival since 2004, Samford holds a BS and MA degrees in Communication.