Tropical Trauma Misery Tour
by Rafael Roncato, NL/BR
PBM/MAS Prize
Ângela Berlinde,
artist, curator, researcher
Size: 10,8 x 16,9 cm
Pages: 306
softcover
Author: Rafael Roncato
Design: Mateus Acioli
Photography Firmly Enters the Everyday
by Anna Pylypyuk & Volodymir Shypotilnykov, UKR
This photobook emerges as a victor for its unique portrayal of everyday life in Soviet Ukraine through the lens of amateur photography. Featuring more than 370 anonymous images sourced from flea markets and online auctions, “Photography Firmly Enters the Everyday” provides a window into the social fabric during the communist project of the 20th century in Ukraine.
The collaborative work of photographers duo Volodymyr Shypotilnykov and Anna Pylypyuk enriches the narrative, collecting both the ordinary and extraordinary moments with depth and insight.
These photographs serve as more than mere images; they stand as tangible records of social existence, immortalizing the essence of a bygone era and offering invaluable insights into the complexities of the human experience.
Anastasiia Leonova,
publisher, art manager and curator, co-founder of IST Publishing house
Size: 23 x 28 cm
Pages: 160
hardcover, open spine
Authors: Anna Pylypyuk & Volodymir Shypotilnykov
Design: Yura Kolomiets
HUN
by Julia Mejnertsen, DK
“HUN” is an amazing book, that takes you on a ride trough nine chapters and leaves you shot with a bullet.
In “HUN” danish photographer Julia Mejnertsen brings together, in a congenial way, the realms of her mother’s hunting hobby and her own approach to photography. She is dissecting the different levels of her controversial relationship to hunting by depictions of animals and nature in zoos, sketches of Elephants and typological drawings of Dumbo, hunting scenes in Zimbabwe, conversations between mother and daughter and questions to the reader. In her own words: „to tell us a story about how white, Western societies have structured and shaped the world’s cultural understanding of nature“. It’s an excellent not only conceptional but highly visual investigation into her own family’s relationship. Her often sequential photography and her very subtle and psychological approach proves the book form to be ideal for such a great long-term photographic project.
Frederic Lezmi,
artistic director The PhotoBookMuseum
Size: 17,2 x 23,2 cm
Pages: 446
softcover, bullet hole in the back
Author: Julia Mejnertsen
Design: Ricardo Báez
BULLET
by Marco Marzocchi, IT
In his captivating photobook “BULLET,” Marco Marzocchi invites us on an intimate journey through the intricacies of his deeply personal quest for meaning. Consisting of 500 images of people, archives and landscapes, flanked by short texts, poems and material which has been gathered over several years, “BULLET” forms a summary of the 48 years which make up Marzocchi’s life until now. It is a search for the right questions to ask in order to make sense of past experiences.
Impulsive snapshots and short written notes which gradually become poems intersected by archival material form a dense rhythm of questions, suggested answers and yet deeper questions. Marzocchi skillfully navigates through the complexities of his own narrative, using the qualities of photography as a medium to articulate the ineffable, to trace connections and draw conclusions through association.
“BULLET” is a nuanced exploration of not just Marzocchi’s life but also the universal quest for understanding and searching for meaning.
Lilli Weinstein,
photographer, project coordinator Dummy Award
Size: 20 x 25,8 cm
Pages: 320
softcover
Author: Marco Marzocchi
Vergissmeinnicht
by Amelie Sachs, DE
“Vergissmeinnicht“ by Amelie Sachs deals with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a menstrual disorder that affects up to 15% of women of childbearing age. Amelie herself suffered from this condition for ten years.
The diary-like realisation of this photo book gives us an intimate insight into her own medical history and how she deals with it. The outstanding dramaturgy, which is made up of subjective mood pictures, self-portraits, medical reports and diary entries, enables us to understand this suffering in an impressive way.
However, Amelie’s courageous work goes beyond the mere depiction of a personal story. She deliberately breaks with one of the many taboo subjects in the field of women’s health, which often remain in the shadows and receive too little public attention. With her unique perspective, Amelie not only manages to open up and inform this field through her artistic realisation, but also to show other women that they are not alone with such an illness.
Thank you Amelie for your courage in sharing this important topic with us. You have filled an important void and encouraged us all to speak more sensitively and openly about personal issues.
Thekla Ehling – photographer and professor of photography
Size: 13 x 19 cm
Pages: 112
softcover, rubber band
Author: Amelie Sachs
1st Prize
Shadow over Shadow
by Vitor Casemiro (BR)
Size: 21.6 x 28 cm
Pages: 127
Binding: Staple Bound
Author: Vitor Casemiro
Design: Mateus Acioli
Publisher: MASA / The PhotoBookMuseum
Year: 2023
Language: English
ISBN: 978-605-9194-71-6
Price: 25€
The dark side of life – corrupted politics, conspiracy theorists, organized crime, psychopathic killers, false prayers and fake news. Looking at the world today we seem to slide into a „New Noir“. SHADOWS OVER SHADOWS plays an elegant fiction / non-fiction game with our perception. What comes as an illustrated script for a shady B-Movie is Vitor Casimeros childhood dream – to make a Film Noir. With the help of images culled from the immense public digital collection of the United States Library of Congress – all made in the US between the 1930s and 1960s, Casimiro has genuinely translated the language of cinema into the language of a photobook. The well-chosen and edited images and the characters he created in his self written script, a Detective, a Femme fatale and a Boxer, constantly draw you further into the story and the book. This visual research into the tropes, clichés and genre conventions of American crime films is an outstanding photobook and a worthy dummy award winner. Congratulations Vitor!
Frederic Lezmi & Markus Schaden,
The PhotoBookMuseum
via artbookcologne
2nd Prize
Pleasant Place
by Lou-Lou van Staaveren (NL)
I am captivated by the physicality of Staaveren’s dummy, its aesthetic adherence to seventies popular science books. An unquestionably very Dutch book in terms of design and colourfulness, it also provides a beautiful exploration on the subject of the garden. There is history, philosophical connotations, fantasy, but also domestic memories and revivals of aesthetics and past times in Staaveren’s self-made archive, and a delightful visual journey through the pages of the book. A small gem—the type of book my older me would love to come across with at a flea-market in some decades from now.
Natasha Christia – Curator, Writer and Educator, Barcelona, Spain
3rd Prize
A mal tiempo, Buena cara
by Bebe Blanco Agterberg (NL)
I have been aware of Bebe’s work for some time now. What I appreciate in her work is the always-present cinematographic feeling. ‘A mal tiempo, buena cara’ has an intricate narrative structure. It drags the reader to an active position. Seeing her book is no longer mere reading. But it also demands us to decipher. A beautiful object used for an important contemporary subject: our relationship with memory and the active choice to forget traumas.
João Linneu – Co-Founder of VOID Publishing House, Reykjavík, Iceland
Special Mention
The Yoshida Dormitory Student’s History
by Kanta Nomura (JP)
Size: 16 x 23 cm
Pages: 230
Binding: Hardcover in dust jacket
Author: Kanta Nomura
Design: Yumi Goto
Publisher: Cesura Publishing
Year: 2023
Language: English
ISBN: 978-88-945611-9-7
Price: 45€
A wonderfully multifaceted book about the 109-year-old Yoshida Dormitory at Kyoto University, the oldest existing student dormitory in Japan. Kanta Nomura began taking photographs there over 10 years ago. Inserts, graphics, documents, drawings and cut-outs alternate with the richly illustrated photo pages and document the history of the dormitory in an impressive way. Today, the university authorities wants to close the building due to dilapidation, but the students want to stay. Kanta Nomura’s fulminant book will remain.
Dieter Neubert, Fotobookfestival, Kassel, Germany
via Cesura
1st Prize
Tofu-Knife
by Kohei Kawatani (JP)
Size: 15.6 x 23.0 cm
Pages: 204
Binding: Softcover
Author: Kohei Kawatani
Design: Toru Kase
Publisher: MASA / The PhotoBookMuseum
Year: 2021
Language: English
ISBN: 978-605-9194-63-1
Price: 40€
Tofu-Knife by Kohei Kawatani is a brilliant exploration of the complex relationship between the artistic and commercial in contemporary photography. In its form and design, the photobook mimics both a scientific database – all photographs are clearly listed in the index and catalogued by numbers – and a customer magazine – the photographs are clean and polished, printed on a thin, glossy paper usually used in the advertising context. The depicted objects and environments are above all visually pleasing – lush vegetation, subtle textures, neat interiors, and alluring objects whose only decipherable function is the aesthetic one. Deliberate decontextualization reduces the images to ready-made objects, as well as foregrounding them the fluidity of their meaning, susceptibility to various creative interpretations. Even though Kawatani’s visual expression is decisive and sharp like a (tofu) knife, his photographs are only seemingly impersonal – his unexpected framing, attention to detail, and suggestive use of color hint not only at subjectivity but a certain delicacy, tenderness, and softness (similar, in a way, to tofu itself)
Barbara Gregov, Organ Vida Festival, Zagreb
via artbookcologne
2nd Prize
Rato Tesoura Pistola
by Pedro Guimaraes (PT)
Size: 21 x 25.5 cm
Pages: 56
Binding: Hardcover
Photographs: Pedro Guimarães
Drawings: Nuno Engstrøm Guimarães (7 years old)
Monster Pancakes: Emma-Sofie Engstrøm Guimarães (5 years old)
Mask Sculptures: Sara Bichão
Design: Dayana Lucas
Publisher: XYZ Books
Year: 2021
Language: English
ISBN: 978-989-53182-2-3
Price: 32€
Rato, Tesoura, Pistola gathers together photographs by Pedro Guimarães, produced in collaboration with Nuno Engstrøm Guimarães (drawings, 7 years old) and Emma-Sofie Engstrøm Guimarães (monster pancakes, 5 years old). Sara Bichão kidly offered her masks that becomes part of a familiar entertainment revealing what an author can be, literally “one who causes to grow,” and not only in a parental relationship. Combining the drawings of his children together with portraits of them playfully or simply relating with the father’s camera, this photobook, designed by Dayana Lucas, is a manifold of experiences and artistic attitudes in which photography works as an intertwining element and where design strategies activate it as a device involving the reader himself in the game. As the title of the book suggests, “Mouse, scissors, gun”, and Pedro explains in the book presentation: “This is how we play together, how we pretend there is no such thing as the vast emptiness that keeps us apart during most days of our lives: 2500 km of land and water, to be precise, the sheer vastness of Europe. But most days is not all days of our lives, right?”. And the time we spend flipping through this book, opening the folds that constitute its very semantic structure, has the sweet and captivating flavour of the magic time described in Pedro’s book, shortening distances and creating magic worlds with the interaction of basic, but powerful elements.
Chiara Capodici, Leporello Books, Rome
via xyz books
3rd Prize
The Land of Promises
Youqine Lefèvre (BE)
Size: 23 x 29 cm
Pages: 244
Binding: Softcover
Author: Youqine Lefèvre
Design: Rob van Hoesel
Publisher: The Eriskay Connection
Year: 2021
Language: English/French
ISBN: 978-94-92051-83-7
Price: 50€
(sold out at publisher)
Youqine Lefèvre’s The Land of Promises is a graduation project from KASK, the School of Arts in Gent. Perhaps, one of the best ones I have seen in 2020. It is a very solid and professional work, and indeed a promise of an emerging talent. It tells a story of the artist herself who was adopted in 1994 by one of six Belgian families who went to China to a specific orphanage in order to adopt girls. The artist didn’t have her personal memory of this event, only the mediated one—through the stories and documents. The dummy comprises those documents and images of the time, as well as the photographs and research that Lefèvre produced between 2017 and 2019, looking closely at her own story, and at the birth policy and its consequences in China at large. Powerful photography. Modest and effective design of the book object. And a more than urgent subject. When I saw this application while selecting for Kassel Dummy Award 2020, it had a strong impact on me, we talked about it for a while with all the jury members, and there was quite a consensus that this book-to-be is of profound significance.
Daria Tuminas, FOTODOK, Utrecht
via tipi books
Special Mention
SOKOHI –
VISUAL EASE BLACK
by Moe Suzuki (JP)
Visual Ease Black is a handmade spiral-bound notebook made in the workshops of the social welfare corporation Tokyo Hikari, which are specialised in the manufacturing of handmade spiral notebooks. It has black pages, which is useful for people with low vision, but also attractive for artists and useful for technical drawings. SOKOHI is an artist book by Moe Suzuki, developed in a workshop with Yumi Goto, in 2019. To use the notebook made by blind people as the structural and metaphorical support to tell the story of the artist’s father, who suffers from glaucoma and is slowly losing his vision makes all the sense in the world. At least, in our world. Thanks to brilliant book-makers like Suzuki, the world of photobooks has become even more fluid, open and seamlessly integrated with the world of artists’ books today. SOKOHI, which holds personal notes and photographs of Tetsuichi Suzuki, disintegrates more and more towards the end, in a parallel process to his gradual loss of eyesight. His daughter tries to understand, and to show us what she feels that is going on behind her father’s eyes: At first tiny and few, then more and always bigger laser-cut holes appear in the pages, simulating the “blind spots” in the father’s visual field, and what the artist feels must be his inner life. A highly elaborate book that touches us in an intimate way, without asking for pity or sadness. Pure visual poetry at its best.
Moritz Neumüller, Independent Curator, Barcelona
1st Prize
Did you know?
by Iris Janssens (BE)
Size: 22 x 27 cm
Pages: 196
Binding: Softcover, open spine
Author: Iris Janssens
Design: Malin Gewinner, Luca Napoli (Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem)
Publisher: MASA
Year: 2020
Language: English
ISBN:
Price: 25€
Do you remember the horrible chemical industry disaster in Bhopal 1984 with thousands and thousands of dead and severely injured people? Did you know? uses an innovative concept to show the long-term impacts of this human-made tragedy. This deeply touching book is edited and compiled so as to form a strong photographic document and a manifesto of political activism. By transforming the book into hundreds of flysheets picked up by the readers, the story spreads all over and the work helps to prevent the disaster being forgotten. Did you know? opens up new inspiring thoughts about the role of the photobook in art and society today. Congratulations!
Markus Schaden, The PhotoBookMuseum, Cologne
via artbookcologne
2nd Prize
Haddon Hall
by Naomi Harris (USA)
Size: 20.5 x 27 cm
Pages: 176
Binding: Hardcover, open spine
+ Postcard inserted
Author: Naomi Harris
Design: João Linneu
Publisher: VOID/MASA
Year: 2020
Language: English
ISBN: 978-618-5479-11-4
Price: 44€
This book strikes me with its fresh, light and striking pictures of amazing contrast and flashy colours, as they show the everyday joys and struggles of old people in a hotel in Miami. It is not a photographer entering an unknown quirky community of Holocaust survivors that has found their last companionship at this retreat. Naomi Harris is part of the highs and lows of these men and woman in a very natural, intimate yet respectful way. The images are well composed and wrapped in the bright blue wavy surface of Haddon’s Hall outside pool reflecting the sunlight. These marbled lines of the pool’s surface lead directly to the bottom of this Haddon Hall pleasure ground and the personal stories of its inhabitants. Even 20 years after Harris took these pictures, it is still an extraordinarily relevant project about laughter and love, decay and death, and about the collectively tying memory of times of glory and the horror of the Holocaust. It is an homage to those people we tend to forget and displace many times in their life, brought to us in the convincing vibrant shape of a photobook.
Ufuk Sahin, Printer and Publisher, Istanbul
via artbookcologne
3rd Prize
Vila Autódromo,
Rio de Janeiro
by Rony Maltz &
Guilherme Freitas (BR)
Villa Autódromo is a sharp, harsh and still elegant depiction of the destruction of Brazilian community’s habitat, provoked by a chaotic accumulation of political, economic and historical decisions as chaotic as the “urban landscapes of demolitions” we find in the book-, the consequences of which affect various generations of citizens. Although this project is concentrated in a very particular place, city and country, we can easily find the same problem all over the globe. A very powerful yet subtle approach to the conflict presented with intelligence and an extraordinary manufacture.
María García Yelo, Christies, Madrid
Special Mention
Güle Güle
by Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni (IT)
Size: 21 x 30 cm
Pages: 128
Binding: Softcover, saddle stitching
Author: Brad Feuerhelm
Design: Jean-Marc Caimi & Valentina Piccinni
Publisher: André Frère Éditions
Year: 2020
Language: French/English
ISBN: 979-10-92265-90-3
Price: 35€
Güle Güle is a full bodied work documenting Istanbul in all its facets and in a fast forward mode. It is a visual field journal by the two Italian photographers Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccini in the Turkish metropolis. On a 4-week trip they have captured street scenes, private indoor insights or intimate portrait close-ups using the whole palette of light and colours as well as contrasts and contradictions.
Much more than snapshots by two Italians on the Bosporus, this is a significant and playful reportage about striking Turkish topics, between cliché and kitsch, hard facts and reality. Moments of standstill and high speed, ancient traditions and current chaos, beauty, pressure and violence stand next to each other. Güle Güle is one of those photobooks that make you wonder if a corresponding soundtrack exists.
As all the jury members liked this extraordinary book but could not find the right position on the list, they decided to give it a special mention.
Antje Haferkamp, Fotobookfestival Kassel
1st Prize
Migration as Avantgarde
by Michael Danner (DE)
Size: 20 × 31 cm
Pages: 120
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Michael Danner
Design: Anja Kaiser
Publisher: Verlag Kettler
Year: 2018
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-86206-718-3
Price: 45€
With Migration as Avant-Garde, Michael Danner takes a remarkable approach: he renders the ways in which migrants are pursuing their hope for a better life. The book aims at presenting a complete journey into migration by showing a system made up of people, natural and artificial barriers and refugee camps. Every page of the book questions the way in which we observe and interpret this contemporary issue. Danner is able to play with different elements and to put images, texts and archives into a specific and strong relationship. The book is multi-layered. It presents a coherent narrative as well as some unusual and brave decisions in terms of layout that stress and foster this multiple reading. If the term “avant-garde” initially seems debatable, it then becomes clear when reading the extracts from a 1943 text by the philosopher Hannah Arendt. We decided on this book for an award because of the very good balance it creates between photography and design, as well as for the narrative approach and the tangible “experience” it is possible to have when browsing through it. There have been many works on migration presented and produced over the course of the last few years, Migration as Avant–Garde really stands out and adds another reading to what has already been said – in some cases very well – about one of the most important and sensitive contemporary challenges. With this work Michael Danner offers excellent material for further discourse and analysis.
Salvatore Vitale, Lausanne
via Verlag Kettler
2nd Prize
Hayati
by Karim El Maktafi (IT/MA)
Hayati is by Karin El Maktafi, born in Italy of Moroccan parents.
In a small booklet, he records his life and travels, combining this family images and documents. He is a skilled photographer with his own ‘voice’, although the idiom of black-and-white photography is familiar. It is not very often that we see an account in photography of a second-generation minority cultural group because parents do not like their children to choose photography as a career. Karim is probably not an exception, but has still produced this sensitive booklet. He has a fantastic eye, especially for light. All the images are carefully cropped and processed and give us a view of life as we seldom see it. A very good story, very much worth seeing!
Corinne Noordenbos, Amsterdam
3rd Prize
Water Tanks in Mathare Slum
by Filippo Romano (IT)
Size: 17 × 20 cm
Pages: 64
Binding: Hard board
Author: Filippo Romano
Design:
Publisher: A+m Bookstore
Year: 2019
Language: English
ISBN:
Price: 35€
Fillipo Romano’s great little book Water Tanks in Mathare Slum shows us that a book does not have to big, expensive, conceptually intricate and serious in order to deal with serious issues. Romano takes us to the Mathare slums of Nairobi and teaches us about the problems of the water situation there by means of simple images and naive drawings, almost like a children’s book!
Morten Andersen, Oslo
via Kominek
2nd Prize
Untitled
by Zeynep Kayan (TR)
Size: 20 x 26,5 cm
Pages: 60
Binding: Softcover, Handmade binding
Author: Zeynep Kayan
Publisher: Alina Books
Year: 2018
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-86206-459-5
Price: 40€
via via IACK (Japan)
2nd Prize
3rd Generation
by Mafalda Rakoš, Iuna Vieira, Raphael Reichl (AT)
3rd Prize
Scrap Book
by Hajime Kimura (JP)
Size: 12 x 21 cm
Pages: 148
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Hajime Kimura
Design:
Publisher: Verlag Kettler
Year: 2015
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-86206-486-1
Price: 24,80 €
via Verlag Kettler
1st Prize
Burning down the house
by Norman Behrendt (DE)
Size: 21 x 26 cm
Pages: 396
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Norman Behrendt
Design:
Publisher: Seltmann Publishers
Year: 2014
Language: English/German
ISBN: 978-3-944721-23-1
Price: 59 €
2nd Prize
Thule
by Artur Krutsch (NL)
3rd Prize
Fahrtenschwimmer
by Robert Beyer (DE)
1st Prize
Passengers
by Dagmar Keller & Martin Wittwer (DE)
Size: 19 x 27.5 cm
Pages: 164
Binding: Thread-sewn Hardcover
Author: Dagmar Keller, Martin Wittwer
Design: Dagmar Keller, Martin Wittwer
Publisher: Spector Books
Year: 2013
Language:
ISBN: 978-394-4669-02-1
Price: 34€
via Spector Books
2nd Prize
Liebe Grüße aus 18500 m Höhe, MICHELLE
by Carmen Catuti (DE)
Size: 24.5 x 30 cm
Pages: 56
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Carmen Catuti
Design:
Publisher: Seltmann Publishers
Year: 2013
Language: German
ISBN: 978-3-942831-93-2
Price: 35€
3rd Prize
Bebra Curiosa
by Axel Beyer (DE)
Size: 30 x 24 cm
Pages: 104
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Axel Beyer
Design:
Publisher: Seltmann Publishers
Year: 2010
Language: English
ISBN: 978-3-934687-90-5
Price: 39,90€