Wiki Loves Monuments to launch world’s largest photography comp in SA

The world’s largest photography competition, Wiki Loves Monuments, is being launched next month in order to capture South Africa’s heritage. Besides the theme, the main aim of this record-breaking initiative is to collect and share knowledge.

Ever since 2001, Wikimedia has been responsible for various chapters and projects including the popular free online encyclopedia Wikipedia. Wiki Loves Monuments is part of Wikimedia’s grand plan to ultimately share the sum of all human knowledge freely with every single human in the world.

People are encouraged to participate and celebrate South Africa’s living heritage by taking photographs of heritage sites and uploading them either via mobile or their computers to the competition website.

The competition was first launched in the Netherlands back in 2010 and, by 2012, received more than 350 000 images submitted by more than 15 000 people from 35 countries. The same year, there have been 1 854 photographs entered in South Africa. This year, however, the number is expected to triple. All these photos are submitted under the Creative Commons license making them legally free to share.

Third prize winner of 2012– Swartberg Pass 01 by Chris Snelling

There are over 3 000 heritage sites across the country that form part of the South African Heritage Resource Agency’s (SAHRA) lists. These include everything in and between buildings, sites of struggle and memory, graves, monuments, archaeological sites, etc.

This year, the competition will be kicking-off 1 September and will run until 30 September. The winner of this competition will receive R7500 and will be submitted to compete in Wiki Loves Monuments internationally. It will be launched at Prestwich Place Memorial in the Western Cape.