LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Malick Sidibé
Internationally-renowned Malian photographer Malick Sidibé opened his legendary and still-thriving Studio Malick in 1962 in Bamako, Mali, where he continues to live and work. Sidibé was Bamako's first photojournalist, capturing the energy of that city's youth at parties and social gatherings. Studio Malick became a central meeting place for this generation, and Sidibé's striking portraits reveal an exuberance for photography that matched the spirit emblematic of post-colonial West Africa in the late 1950s through the mid-1970s. His pioneering images from this period have come to represent a collective portrait of that time and place, and he has continued to photograph more recently for the French fashion magazines Vogue, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Double. Now widely collected and exhibited throughout the world, Sidibé won the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2003, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2007 Venice Biennale.

Malick Sidibé Bamako, Mali, 2001, © André Magnin, Courtesy C.A.A.C—The Pigozzi Collection, Geneva

ICP TRUSTEES AWARD: Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton has a passion for photography. Best known as the four-time Oscar-nominated star of such films as The Godfather, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Reds, her distinctive performances and style have made her one of the most iconic actresses in Hollywood. However, outside of Keaton's many acting, directing, film production, and philanthropic pursuits, she has long pursued her interest in the photographic medium. Several collections of her own photographs have been published, and she has edited or co-edited multiple collections of vintage work, commonly focusing on photographers who are forgotten or ignored. The latter include Still Life (1983), Mr. Salesman (1993), Local News (1999), and her forthcoming collection of images from Fort Worth, Texas, Bill Wood's Business, to be published in conjunction with the ICP exhibition of the same name in May 2008.

Firooz Zahedi/JBG Photo.com

YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHER: Mikhael Subotzky
A native of Cape Town, South Africa, Mikhael Subotzky received widespread acclaim for his 2004 project Die Vier Hoeke ("The Four Corners"), an in-depth study of the South African prison system. Subotzky has extended his work on crime and incarceration to include photographic workshops with prisoners and a new series on ex-prisoners entitled Umjiegwana ("The Outside"). He was the winner of the Special Jurors Award at the 2005 Les Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, the 2006 F25 Award for Concerned Photography, the 2007 KLM Paul Huff Award, and most recently, the 2007 City of Perpignan Young Reporter Award.

PUBLICATION: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar by Taryn Simon
With a foreword by Salman Rushdie, the photographs in An American Index (Steidl, 2007), which were exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007, serve as an inventory of spaces that function at the heart of American culture but lie hidden and out-of-view. Simon's varied subject matter in this series, gathered from the realms of government, medicine, entertainment, science, religion, national security, and nature, ranges from radioactive capsules at a nuclear waste storage facility to a portrait of a selectively inbred white tiger. Carefully documenting provocative and controversial subjects, she makes use of the annotated photograph's power to engage and inform us, employing a direct and unsentimental approach that brings these strange and often inaccessible aspects of American life into the light of day.

Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Photo by Robert Maxwell

WRITING: Bill Jay
Bill Jay is the publisher of over 400 articles and author of more than 20 books on the history and criticism of photography. Born in London in 1940, Jay became the first Director of Photography at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts and the first Editor/Director of both Creative Camera and Album magazines. He left England in 1972 to study with Beaumont Newhall and Van Deren Coke at the University of New Mexico, following which he founded the program of Photographic Studies at Arizona State University, where he taught history and criticism classes for 25 years. Bill Jay's Album, published by Nazraeli Press in 2007, includes a selection of portraits of eminent photographers from the past three decades, all annotated with Jay's handwritten captions. Although now retired, he continues to write, photograph, and run a website of his work.

© Bill Jay, from "Bill Jay's Album" (Nazraeli Press, 2008)

ART: Edward Burtynsky
Edward Burtynsky, born of Ukrainian heritage in St. Catharine's, Ontario, is one of Canada's most respected photographers. His work depicts global industrial landscapes, exploring the intricate connection between industry and nature. He combines the raw elements of mining, quarrying, manufacturing, shipping, oil production, and recycling into images that find beauty and humanity in unlikely places. Retaining deep ties to Toronto's art community, Burtynsky lectures extensively and has had his work featured in solo and group exhibitions across Canada, and in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

PHOTOJOURNALISM: Anthony Suau
American-born Anthony Suau, based in Europe for nearly 20 years, has dedicated his career to documenting the effects of international events on the lives of people around the world. Suau's images of the famine in Ethiopia garnered the Pulitzer Prize in 1984, and he was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1996 for his coverage of the war in Chechnya. A contract photographer for TIME magazine since 1991 and author of several books, Suau now lives and works in New York City. In 1986 he received the ICP Infinity Award for Young Photographer.

APPLIED/FASHION/ADVERTISING PHOTOGRAPHY: Craig McDean
Craig McDean was born in Manchester, England and currently lives in New York City. This photographer, music video and commercial director, author, and martial artist—originally trained and employed as a car mechanic—has brought impressive ideas and visual styles to major ad campaigns for world-class designers. His fashion photography has been featured in W, American, French, and Italian Vogue, Another Magazine, and The New Yorker in bold campaigns for Armani, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Hugo Boss, and Estée Lauder, among others. With a sophisticated, conceptual approach to fashion photography and portraiture, McDean has become a central figure in the world of fashion.

Photo by Huan Nguyen

SELECTION COMMITTEE
Alanna Heiss, Director, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York
David Levi Strauss, Writer, Chair of Graduate Program in Art Criticism & Writing, School of Visual Arts, New York
Ann Thomas, Curator of Photography, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario

INTERNATIONAL NOMINATING COMMITTEE
Stuart Alexander, Independent Curator/Senior Specialist, Christies, New York
Glenda Bailey, Editor in Chief, Harper's Bazaar, New York
Fabien Baron, Owner, Baron & Baron, New York
Vladimir Birgus, Director, Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University; Head Curator, Prague Biennale Photo. Prague, Czech Republic
Tracy Doyle, Art and Photography Editor, Interview Magazine, New York
Frits Gierstberg, Curator, Head of Exhibitions, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam
Greg Hobson, Curator of Photographs, National Media Museum, Bradford, England
Roberto Huarcaya, Director, Centro de la Imagen, Lima, Peru
Myrna Kresh, Photography Consultant/Producer, MEREPS Agency, New York
Gigi Loizzo, Director of Retail Operations, International Center of Photography, New York
Lesley Martin, Publisher, Aperture Foundation, New York
Jody Quon, Photography Director, New York Magazine, New York
Françoise Reynaud, Curator, Museum Carnavalet, Paris, France
Hyesoo Woo, Curator, LEEUM, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Wang Yao, Chief Editor, Photography Department, China News Service, Beijing