A WKU faculty member has been chosen to be a member of a global photography contest selection committee. 

Loup Langton, former director of the School of Journalism & Broadcasting, was announced as a member of the selection committee for the fifth edition of the 6×6 Global Talent Program for the North and Central America regions. 

Langton, along with four other judges, will select the six leaders from the regions for the World Press Photo Contest, which identifies six under-recognized photographers from each of the world’s six continents.

“To develop a new and more diverse visual representation of the world, we need to locate, recognize and share the best work,” the website states. 

The 6×6 Global Talent Program recently announced its winners for Africa and has not yet announced the six winners from the North and Central America regions. The selection committees for each participating region can be found on the World Press Photo website in addition to the six selectees from four of the six regions.

Langton said he was honored to be selected as a judge for the contest, which is the second oldest photojournalism contest in the world. 

Langton served as SJ&B Director from 2011 to 2017 and was recently named the School’s Turner Professor, an endowed position. Along with friend Pablo Corral Vega, Langton created and directed the POY Latam visual journalism contest, one of the largest and most prestigious contests of its kind in Ibero America, with over 1,900 entries, according to his faculty bio. 

Langton has been invited by World Press Photo each year since 2005 to interview photojournalism and multimedia award winners, which are featured on the website and have won several awards, according to his bio. 

Langton said World Press Photo is “one of the few most important photojournalism organizations on the globe.”

“In addition to their contests, they have a lot of international, educational initiatives for visual journalists,” he said. “This particular initiative takes nominations from all over the world.”

Works will be published every four months, and a global perspective will be completed every two years. Both have an overall goal of promoting and diversifying visual storytelling.

According to World Press Photo, “The world of image-making is expanding, often ways unrestricted by convention. In this program, both still photography and moving images will be welcome as the emphasis is on visual storytelling.”

With six talents already recognized from the Southeast Asia and Oceania, South America and Europe regions, nominees and followers of the visual arts alike await the announcement of the six recognized talents from the regions of North America and Asia to be announced in coming months.

Abbigail Nutter can be reached at 270-745-6011 and [email protected].