Canon started the New Cosmos of Photography as a cultural support project in 1991. Although the Competition closed in 2021, a total of 35,550 contestants entered the contest's 44 competitions and 1,126 took home awards. We are very grateful to the many aspiring photographers who competed in the New Cosmos of Photography and who made it such a success as a public photo competition.

The New Cosmos of Photography would not have been possible without the kind cooperation and assistance of the renowned photographers, videographers, artists, curators, and photo and art critics from Japan and abroad who judged the competitions. We are proud to have brought to light the power, ambition, and creativity of photographers attempting to forge new expressions unbridled by the bounds of photography and to have helped launch the careers of many successful photographers active today all over the world.

To express our gratitude for the past 30 years, we will hold a retrospective exhibition this year entitled Tracing the 30 Years of the New Cosmos of Photography: What Photography Has Done; What We Have Done Through Photography. The exhibition will review the history of the contest through the works of generations of award winners. The exhibition will be held at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (Ebisu) and Canon Gallery S (Shinagawa) from mid-October.

We look forward to seeing you there.