WPPI bans member for 5 years & rescinds all past awards

Following on from the decision by the Australian Institute of Professional Photography to disqualify an image from Lisa Saad’s winning portfolio in the 2018 Australian Professional Photography Awards (Commercial category), the American organisation, WPPI, best known for its week-long annual event in Las Vegas, combining a major competition, educational seminars with an industry trade show, and networking events, has also taken action to strip one of their members of all past awards.

The recent post on their Facebook page indicated that they have decided to “rescind one member's past WPPI awards and Honors of Excellence points. She will not be permitted to enter any WPPI competition for 5 years.”

We reached out to WPPI to ascertain the identity of the member, but they were unwilling to confirm. Their official response was to repost the original FB post which appears below.

Below is the full text published on the WPPI Facebook page:

"WPPI competitions' rules specifically prohibit an entrant from submitting another artist's work, using any stock photography images or using any portion of a photograph not personally captured by the entrant themselves in their submissions.

"Following a thorough examination of past entries, we have decided to rescind one member's past WPPI awards and Honors of Excellence points. She will not be permitted to enter any WPPI competition for 5 years.

"WPPI supports artists' rights and the intellectual property of our photography community. We cannot condone plagiarism."

The WPPI event runs from 25 February to 1 March.

After their decision to rescind the awards last week, WPPI is taking a proactive approach with entries into their current competition, requesting that photographers provide additional support for their entries. A message posted on the WPPI The Annual Facebook page, from Luke Edmonson, the current WPPI print competition director, indicated that entrants would have received an email from him requesting missing RAW or unedited JPEG files.

“There are over 300 entries that were able to submit through the website before it started to require the supporting files for vetting. Not your fault, we've just got to clean it up at this point,” Edmonson said.

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