In 2009, Korske Ara, a passionate young photographer from Australia launched the World Photo Day Project with the dream to unite local and global communities in a worldwide celebration of photography.

On August 19th 2010, World Photo Day hosted it's first global online gallery. With 270 photographs shared and website visitors from over 100 countries, this marked the first official, globally reaching World Photo Day.

Since the launch of the project, we've heard from people that have been celebrating photography on August 19th in their local communities prior to 2010. There's also evidence of an attempt to start a June 1st photography celebration in 2005. We acknowledge this history of previous celebrations and believe that it demonstrates that the passion behind photography is the foundation of World Photo Day.

Image: Alef Rahman: Taiping, Ipoh, Malaysia