Photo and Video Award 2023: These are the winners
Bright orange-red, dense fur, a bluish facial color and the eponymous short nose - as if he had been waiting for the photographer, the male golden snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus roxellana roxellana) looks directly into the camera. The resulting portrait, taken by Rodrigo Costa Araújo, a scientist in the Primate Genetics Department at the DPZ, won the 2023 Photo Award in the Aesthetics category. The monkey was photographed in Shennongjia National Park in the Chinese province of Hubei. A beautiful image with rarity value, as the golden snub-nosed monkeys are highly endangered due to the ongoing destruction of their habitat. Only around 15,000 animals remain in the wild, and the number is falling.
At first glance, all you can see is a dry branch with some foliage and nothing else for a long time. The real highlight of the winning photo in the originality category only becomes apparent after a longer, very close look. After all, the photographer, Jakob Finn von Petersdorff-Campen, an assistant in the Department of Cognitive Ethology, has hidden a clue in the title of his photo."Find the reptile!" the viewer was asked. And after some attentive searching, many DPZ students also managed to find the small moss leaf-tailed gecko (Uroplatus sikorae) - lying flat on the branch and perfectly matched in color.The reptile, which is native to Madagascar, is probably one of the best camouflaged animals in the world.
A declaration of love won the prize in the science category. Katharina Decker, a doctoral student in the Infection Biology department, had captured bright green cells under the microscope that had joined together to form a heart shape. She called her picture "Sometimes science is love", which obviously struck a chord with many DPZ scientists.
For the first time this year, a prize was also awarded for the best video. The winner was a cinematic expedition to the limestone mountains of Vietnam. This is the home of the Delacour's langur (Trachypithecus delacouri), which is threatened with extinction. The largest remaining population has fewer than 200 individuals in the Van Long nature reserve in Ninh Binh province.As part of a research project to study the gut microbiome of the rare monkey species, the researchers need to obtain faecal samples from the animals.The film by Nguyen van Truong, a doctoral student in the Primate Genetics department, shows in impressive pictures that this can be quite adventurous.
A total of 102 photos and five videos were submitted in 2023 for the Photo and Video Prize awarded by the DPZ Sponsors' Association.The ten best images in the three categories could be admired in an exhibition in the foyer in December.As every year, all DPZ employees were allowed to vote for their favorite pictures and thus determine the winning photos. The best video was selected by a jury of experts from the Sponsors' Association.The photo and video prizes are endowed with 200 euros per category and are awarded once a year to DPZ employees and guests who capture their work on film or in photographs.