The 2024 How We Age Photography Competition seeks to build on the success of IPH's 2022 competition and will this year focus on the theme of 'How We Age: Working, learning, and volunteering in later life'.
The all-island competition is open for entries from Wednesday, 1 May and has several top prizes on offer.
The How We Age competition is all about changing how we portray ageing and older people in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
It seeks to create a series of images that will better represent and more accurately portray what it means to age or get older by showing older people doing ordinary, everyday things.
Under the theme of How We Age: Working, learning, and volunteering in later life, IPH is seeking images that portray older people in an authentic and inclusive way - regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, culture, ability, income, or post code.
Under this theme, the Institute is seeking images that reflect and include older adults:
- Working – all forms of work, part-time, full-time, paid and unpaid;
- Learning – engaged in lifelong learning, teaching or learning;
- Volunteering - contributing to society both formally and informally.
The competition is free to enter, open to residents of Ireland and Northern Ireland over the age of 18, and open for entries from 1 May until 16 August.
Entrants can submit up to a maximum of three photos and all entries must be submitted via the online entry form. Acceptance of terms and conditions is a condition of entry.
Prizes include gift vouchers for photography equipment to the value of €/£500 for first prize, €/£300 for second prize, and €/£100 for third prize, depending on where the winning entrants reside.
The 2024 How We Age competition will add to an existing How We Age image gallery which is available for use by IPH, partners and other stakeholders as a free-to-access image resource.
Details of the winners will be announced and published on the IPH website on 1 October, International Day of Older Persons.
Submission Guidelines
The overall theme of the 2024 all-island photography competition encourages photographers to consider how older people are currently portrayed versus the lived reality of our parents, relatives, neighbours, friends, and work colleagues.
Under the theme of How We Age: Working, learning, and volunteering in later life photographers are asked to consider how older adults engage with and contribute to their communities through work, lifelong learning, or volunteering.
Photographs could be of an older individual, couple, or group engaging in work, learning, or volunteering in their communities. Images can portray everyday type situations and activities that reflect the real lives of older people, either indoors or outdoors.
To help guide photographers on the types of images that could fall under the theme, consider the following examples:
- Older adults in the workplace – eg all forms of work, part-time, full-time, paid and unpaid etc
- Older adults using digital technology and services – eg online learning, formal and informal etc
- Older adults volunteering in the community – eg volunteering for community, social, and charity initiatives etc
- Older adults teaching a skill / coaching other – eg teaching any form of sport, physical activity, arts, cooking etc
- Older adults caring for others - eg caring for a grandchild, family member, or loved one.
Things to consider before entering
- Be Real – Consider the older people in your family, community, work and wider networks and how they live their day to day lives. We are looking for realistic portraits and images of older people engaged in work, lifelong learning, or volunteering.
- Have Respect - Older people contribute to society in a variety of ways, so images should depict them as valuable, important members of society.
- Capture Diversity – Older people are not a homogenous group and we welcome images capturing a diversity of gender, race and ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, etc.
