ABOUT THE MPA

The Mobile Photography Awards were founded in 2011 to recognize and celebrate the talent and imagery of the mobile photo & art communities.

Over the course of three years, the Mobile Photography Awards has evolved into the world’s largest annual event & competition of it’s kind, open to all mobile phones and tablets. The MPA offers photographers and artists opportunities for exhibits, open gallery calls, fine art sales, annual cash prizes, giveaways of amazing products and services, and more. As an organization, we have distributed more than $25,000 directly to artists and photographers through cash prizes and fine-art sales from our exhibits.

At heart, the Mobile Photography Awards is an annual way to bring the community of artists and developers together, exhibit their work in galleries, bring wonderful images into the realm of fine art and create a legitimate way to focus real world attention to mobile artists. The MPA isn’t about about having a “winning” image on a website with a stamp on it. The MPA is an opportunity for people to bring attention to their own work at the same time as we bring attention to the work of the community as a whole.  We are a combination of an open gallery call and a juried competition.

Since 2011, the Mobile Photography Awards has produced nine successful exhibits in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Collingwood, and Melbourne. We have plenty more exciting exhibits and showcases planned for 2014.

The MPA Exhibits are a feature for the winning images from the annual competition and are chosen from thousands by a jury of twenty photographic professionals, journalists, teachers, artists and leaders of the photography, mobile photography and art worlds.

The Mobile Photography Awards has 20 photo categories. Every image entered may be placed in up to three (3) categories. All 20 category winners receive MPA prize packs and are included on the exclusive MPA Exhibit Tour, with further opportunities for fine art sales. Grand Prize winners receive $3000, 2nd Place is awarded $500 and the winner of the MPA/DIPTIC Photo Essay is also awarded $500.

If it’s true what Henri-Cartier Bresson says, that our first 10,000 photos will be our worst, then it’s safe to say that mobile photography has given a lot of people the opportunity to learn very quickly from their mistakes and seek a photographic voice in a highly compressed amount of time. The diligent, difficult and inward looking work of achieving better photos over time, of shooting and developing our worst 10,000 photos, is now something that can be accomplished by a lot more people in way less time. Following this idea, it makes sense to us that some brilliant artists and creators are in our midst.  And that’s a good thing for everybody.

Daniel Berman
Founder the Mobile Photography Awards