26-year-old Brazilian photographer Julio Bittencourt has won the Leica Oskar Barnack Award 2007 for a series of portraits of inhabitants of a house occupied by homeless people in downtown São Paulo, Brasil. Honourable mentions went to the Spanish photographer José Cendon for a reportage project in psychiatric hospitals in East Africa and the Norwegian Margaret M. de Lange, who captured the childhood and youth of her two daughters in a long-term photographic project.

Held since 1979 in memory of the inventor of the first 35mm camera, Oskar Barnack (1879 – 1936), the competitions each year centres on the relationship between man and his environment. Launched in 1925 as the world’s first compact camera, the Leica 35mm made it possible to take strong reportage shots and became the tool of many photographers who had a lasting influence on photojournalism.

Judging took place in the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, and was chaired by director Agnès Sire. Members of panel included François Hébel (Rencontres d’Arles), Hans-Michael Koetzle (Leica World), Brigitte Schaller (Leica Fotografie International) and Gaëlle Gouinguené and Gero Furchheim (Leica Camera Group).

The winning images and 5,000 Euro award were presented during the photo festival Rencontres d’Arles last month in the south of France.