Q: How do you judge 6,500 Prints
in EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS?

A: Use your marbles

In July UNESCO sent me to Tokyo as the Australian judge on a 40 country photographic competition - a competition virtually unknown inside Australia. This is proven by the fact that 532 photographers in China submitted a total of 1,981 prints, while only five Australian photographers submitted 19 prints - and most of those were dross.

The United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation holds a competition with a different theme each year. 'OUR ELDERS - Happiness in Old Age' attracted entries from 24 countries - from as far afield as Iran to China and as unknown (at least in Australia) as Myanmar to Niue.

There is no entry fee, no monetary prizes and the images are used only by UNESCO to foster better cultural understanding between the participating countries - copyright remains with the photographer.

With true Japanese efficiency, in the space of eight and a half hours 6,500 prints were whittled down to 110 - I think that works out at about 13 seconds for each print, making a bit of a mockery of the APPA system!

The method was admirably simple.

First, 6500 images were reduced to 600 by a simple 'in' or 'out' selection. Then each judge - there were eight in total, including Magnum photographer Raghu Rai from India and Yoshino Oishi, who did the amazing images on the Killing Fields of Cambodia - was given 30 marbles.

These were placed on their preferred prints - with no more than one marble permitted on any single print: 8 judges x 30 marbles = 240 prints. This process was repeated a second time, except that this time any print could receive more than one marble (to a maximum of five). This whittled the images down to the published collection of 110 images.

Finally, each judge was given 15 marbles, further reducing the finalist's pile to 25. The final 3 "Grand Prints" and the 10 selected for special prizes were achieved by discussion.

United Nations diplomacy dictated that there had to be at least one winner from each country submitting prints - lucky for Australia. Frankly, without that rule, we wouldn't have ended up with a single winner!

It's a pity more Australians weren't included. Oh well! Maybe next year!

Peter Adams, Federal President, ACMP

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