Geneva, 8 July 2010. Picture this: For the first time, amateur photographers around the world collide with the past, present and future of particle physics.

Five of the world’s leading particle physics laboratories will make the image a reality when they join together to host a Particle Physics Photowalk on 7 August. More than 200 people will have the rare opportunity to photograph state-of-the-art accelerators and detectors in all their beauty and complexity. Photographers will benefit from special behind-the-scenes access to laboratories in Asia, Europe and North America, with tours tailored to the creative eye.

Photographers are invited to register for a Particle Physics Photowalk at these participating laboratories:

• CERN in Geneva, Switzerland
• DESY in Hamburg, Germany
• Fermilab in Illinois, USA
• KEK in Tsukuba, Japan
• TRIUMF in Vancouver, Canada.

In Europe, highlights include the future of the CERN laboratory, with visits to the Compact Linear Collider test facility and the LHC’s new linear accelerator currently under construction. At the DESY laboratory in Germany, photographers will view the past and present of particle physics during a visit to the former underground home of the HERA B detector, where new particle detectors are now being built and tested.

At Japan’s KEK laboratory, highlights include the large Belle particle detector, photon factory, and two test facilities for innovative particle accelerators.

And in North America, sites will include an accelerator test facility and antimatter factory at Fermilab near Chicago, and the isotope research facilities for physics and medicine at TRIUMF in Vancouver.

Participating photographers will be invited to submit photos for local and global competitions. The winning photos from each laboratory’s local competition will be displayed in temporary exhibits at the laboratories in 2011. Three photos per laboratory will compete globally in juried and popular-vote competitions. The two global winners will be displayed in all laboratory’s exhibits, and appear in particle physics publications symmetry and the CERN Courier.

For Particle Physics Photowalk registration details or more information, visit www.interactions.org/photowalk, or follow particlenews or the hashtag #pppw on Twitter for the latest updates.

Visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/interactions_photos to view photos from previous photo walks at the DESY laboratory in Germany and the TRIUMF laboratory in Canada, and starting in mid-September, to view the winning photos from next month’s worldwide event.

The Particle Physics Photowalk is organized by the InterAction collaboration (interactions.org), whose members represent particle physics laboratories in Asia, North America and Europe.

For more information on the CERN photowalk

• cern.ch/photowalk2010
• Press release: Le CERN invite les photographes amateurs à porter un nouveau regard sur ses installations

Media contacts

CERN
Renilde Vanden Broeck
+41 22 767 2141
press.office@cern.ch

DESY
Thomas Zoufal
+49 40 8998 1666
thomas.zoufal@desy.de

Fermilab
Kurt Riesselmann
+1 630 840 3351
kurtr@fnal.gov

KEK
Youhei Morita
+81 29 879 6047
youhei.morita@kek.jp

TRIUMF
Tim Meyer
+1 604 222 7674
tmeyer@triumf.ca

1.CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.