“Across the thirty-seven books that we had the incredible opportunity to spend time with and deliberate on, some things that surfaced were a sense of investigating the archive and intergenerational conversations,” says juror Shanay Jhaveri. “The shortlist and the winners show the vitality of the form of the book itself, one that is essential today in a culture where images have been dematerialized.”

This year, the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received over one thousand books from fifty-five countries around the world, including standout entries from Ecuador, Lesotho, Uruguay, and Vietnam. Previously, on September 17–19, 2025, a shortlist jury, comprised of an international team, met in New York for three concentrated days of review and deliberation: Brendan Embser, senior editor, Aperture; Florian Koenigsberger, technologist and photographer; Paul Moakley, executive producer, The New Yorker; Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo; and Keisha Scarville, artist.

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PhotoBook Awards

A Look Inside the 2025 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist

A presentation of the thirty-seven books shortlisted for the 2025 PhotoBook Awards, including the winners, is currently on view at Paris Photo through November 16 and will travel to Printed Matter, New York, in January 2026, and then to the Leipzig Photobook Festival, with additional venues to be announced.

Below, read about this year’s winning titles.

Photography Catalog of the Year

Generalized Visual Resistance: Photobooks and Liberation Movements, Edited by Catarina Boieiro and Raquel Schefer
ATLAS, Lisbon, Design by Teo Furtado and Ana Schefer

“The history of photobooks looks different from the vantage point of the African continent,” Drew Thompson writes in Generalized Visual Resistance: Photobooks and Liberation Movements, a vigorous anthology about the links between photography and anticolonial politics from the 1960s to the 1980s, when Portugal’s former colonies in Africa fought for independence. The product of a research initiative begun in 2018—with texts in English, French, and Portuguese—this book spotlights organizations such as the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which was instrumental in producing photobooks wielded by activists to inspire international solidarity. Covers and spreads from rare publications are reproduced throughout, displaying an immense range of visual communication strategies that often put a premium on dramatic, high-impact images, and showing how politically motivated publishers in Maputo, Mozambique, as well as Amsterdam, Moscow, San Francisco, and Tokyo, envisioned Africa’s freedom and self-determination.

Augusta Conchiglia, from Generalized Visual Resistance: Photobooks and Liberation Movements, 2025

First PhotoBook Award

A Study on Waitressing by Eleonora Agostini
Witty Books, Turin, Italy, Design by Massimiliano Pace

Eleonora Agostini’s A Study on Waitressing is a timely, multilayered interrogation of the roles that women are asked to play within the regime of self-presentation in the labor market. Agostini approaches this conceptual study by making fictionalized images of a waitress, played by her own mother. The book is divided into six chapters, each featuring a series of staccato-like sequences that layer upon one another ingeniously, narrowing in on mundane details of gesture, movement, and behavior. These visuals are mixed in with semitransparent pages to mark the transition between sections, featuring small, handwritten notes in her mother’s native Italian. Midway through a sequence of cropped close-ups of a woman’s smile, the book shifts to a manual-like text describing how a waitress is to appear, dress, speak, and maintain herself. The phrase “Always Smile While Speaking” is punctuated throughout—a stern reminder that the customer is always right.

Eleonora Agostini, from A Study on Waitressing, 2025

PhotoBook of the Year

The Classroom by Hicham Benohoud
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio

In the early 1990s, Hicham Benohoud was a jaded high school art teacher in Marrakech. Like his students, who came from underprivileged backgrounds, he felt trapped by the stultifyingly rigid power structures of postcolonial Morocco. So he started to improvise photoshoots to pass the time, transforming his four-hour class into a site of joyful photographic ingenuity and hands-on learning. Made between 1992 and 2002, the black-and-white photographs of The Classroom show Benohoud’s pupils posing against makeshift backdrops and behind paper cages, at desks stacked atop other desks, with Hula-Hoops and in surreal outfits crafted with long cardboard tubes or plastic bags, their faces often playfully obscured. “This book stopped me in my tracks,” says juror Florian Koenigsberger. “Above all, I’m attracted to the resourcefulness of the work. I think it’s a model for creativity in a lot of ways, of making the most of what you have. It offers a beautiful perspective on imagination.”

Hicham Benohoud, from The Classroom, 2025

Jurors’ Special Mention

Flowers Drink the River by Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
STANLEY/BARKER, London, Design by ramel·luzoir

Under the moonlight, in the dark cover of the night, Pia-Paulina Guilmoth guides us into a nocturnal dreamscape that reveals the beauty and resilience born from transformation. Flowers Drink the River spans the first two years of Guilmoth’s gender transition, when she began photographing her community in rural Maine, exploring both the joy and terror of life as a trans woman in a small right-wing town. Using a large-format camera and a heavy flash, Guilmoth oscillates between the mystical and ominous, and each frame feels as if it’s a small moment captured mid-ritual, leaving us to imagine what transpires outside the frame. Spiderwebs and moths sparkle against darkness; mud-drenched bodies intertwine in fields; and landscapes shimmer with an almost ethereal haze. Flowers Drink the River blends Guilmoth’s mystical yet exacting view upon her own search for resistance, magic, and safety in a world often devoid of it.

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth, from Flowers Drink the River, 2025

An exhibition of 2025 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist will be on view at Paris Photo through November 16 and will travel to Printed Matter, New York, in January 2026.

The shortlisted books will be exhibited at Paris Photo, open to the public from November 13 through November 16, followed by an international tour, including in New York at Printed Matter, in January 2026, and other to-be announced venues. Here is a look inside the thirty-seven selected titles for the 2025 PhotoBook Awards shortlist. Stay tuned for the announcement of the winners, which will take place on Friday, November 14, at 3 p.m. at the Balcon de l’Horloge at the Grand Palais.

First PhotoBook

A Study on Waitressing by Eleonora Agostini
Witty Books, Turin, Italy, Design by Massimiliano Pace

Eleonora Agostini’s A Study on Waitressing is a timely, multilayered interrogation of the roles that women are asked to play within the regime of self-presentation in the labor market. Agostini approaches this conceptual study by making fictionalized images of a waitress, played by her own mother. The book is divided into six chapters, each featuring a series of staccato-like sequences that layer upon one another ingeniously, narrowing in on mundane details of gesture, movement, and behavior. These visuals are mixed in with semitransparent pages to mark the transition between sections, featuring small, handwritten notes in her mother’s native Italian. Midway through a sequence of cropped close-ups of a woman’s smile, the book shifts to a manual-like text describing how a waitress is to appear, dress, speak, and maintain herself. The phrase “Always Smile While Speaking” is punctuated throughout—a stern reminder that the customer is always right.

Blue Sun / Sol Azul by Genesis Báez
Capricious Publishing, New York, Design by Studio Lin

Occasionally, the sun is blue. Seen at the right time, at the right place, light scatters in just the right way to see an atmospheric wonder. Blue Sun / Sol Azul, the first monograph by the Puerto Rican photographer Genesis Báez, is sensitive to how perspective may also be a coincidental wonder. Báez, who was raised in two worlds—the island territory of Puerto Rico and the cold environs of New England—photographs the elemental. Condensation on a window, snow in the field, water contained in a glass jar share the same chemistry. Blue Sun, with its deep azure cover and gold foil-stamped titling on the spine, expertly integrates Báez’s photographs and film stills through alternating paper stocks that provide an intriguing tactile experience. Two essays, one by the artist Elle Pérez, beautifully illuminate a focal point between the natural world and kinship (both texts appear in English and Spanish). Maternal care is shown throughout—the same hands that braid hair, tie knots, also feel how unalike water is here and there, flowing freely on the island and at times frozen in the US. They form the elemental bonds of family.

Bianco Ordinario by Hélène Bellenger
Editions de l’Observeur, Vinzelles, France, Design by Hugo Berger and Eleonora Paciullo

For centuries, the marble of the Carrara quarries, located in the Apuan Alps in Italy, has long been sought after by artists and designers for its exceptional quality. But today, the quarries face rapid depletion from the extraction of marble powder—a pure form of calcium carbonate widely used in products ranging from toothpaste, makeup, paper, and cleaning agents, among other items. Hélène Bellenger’s Bianco Ordinario draws a link between the history of this region and the powder in the history of whitening, and by extension, the Whiteness of contemporary Western societies. For this project, Bellenger collected the packaging of products that contained calcium carbonate—chewing gum, cosmetics—directly printing photographs of the marble quarries and landscapes onto their exteriors. On first encounter, the book itself is presented within its own individual, screen-printed packaging. The book’s design highlights Bellenger’s typological approach: each page features the individual printed cartons against an off-white background. The rare full-bleed spread reverses this effect, with cutouts of the packaging fragmenting parts of the images—reinforcing Bellenger’s dialogue between the materiality of a place and its ever-present, consumerist flow.

Ritual [Dis]Appearance / Seremoni Disparisyon by Widline Cadet
Black Mountains Studio, Los Angeles, Design by Blake Duncanson and Widline Cadet

“What happens when memory begins to fail for those of us living in the diaspora?” Shanna Jean-Baptiste writes in an essay in Widline Cadet’s Ritual [Dis]Appearance / Seremoni Disparisyon, an enthralling visual poem. “Does it lead to disappearance?” In her first book, Cadet, who was born in Haiti, includes staged portraiture and mysterious landscapes, reflecting on what is inherited and what is left behind in the wake of migration. Ritual [Dis]Appearance approaches the fallibility of collective memory through astute design and material choices, particularly the printing of family photographs of wedding and birthday parties on diaphanous velum pages, which allows for the interlayering of past and present like a palimpsest. Throughout, conversations between Cadet and her great aunt—the last person still alive in Cadet’s grandmother’s generation—and her mother and sister create a choral effect of family recordkeeping and revelation. Their exchanges appear in English and Haitian Creole and are reproduced on a deep red, uncoated paper; together, they speak of dreams for the future and dual lives in Haiti and the US. Ritual [Dis]Appearance is an outstanding book about what it means to look forward while looking back.

Niemandsland by Daniel Chatard
The Eriskay Connection, Breda, the Netherlands, Design by Carel Fransen

In Niemandsland (Dutch for no man’s land), Daniel Chatard combines photographic, cartographic, and archival modes of inquiry to document communities in the Rhineland engaged in a decades-long struggle against energy giant RWE’s opencast mining operations, which have wreaked destruction on Germany’s villages and oldest forests. The book proceeds chronologically, tracing clashes between activists, residents, politicians, and RWE employees, and eventually following displaced residents as they resettled. A growing map of the extractive project introduces each chapter, punctuating stories of the human cost of its so-called progress. Chatard worked on the book for seven years, returning to the same community with book dummies in which he’d pasted his photographs, encouraging people to write on them, as they responded to the images and to what other people wrote. His work therefore functions not only as an elegy or index of something that has disappeared, but also as an urgent document of how local environmental activism plays out on the ground. Niemansland is an example, as juror Florian Koenigsberger notes, of “how you investigate the way that place has a profound impact on people’s livelihoods, their survival, and their perspective on the world.”

Acedia by Louise Desnos
Witty Books, Turin, Italy, Design by Ilaria Miotto

Listlessness, melancholia, sloth: These words define Acedia, the title of Louise Desnos’s first photobook. Desnos finds a compelling muse in this historically maligned state, making images in those off-the-clock moments exempt from the pressures of the grind, embracing the serendipity that happens when one lets their attention wander without a clear purpose. The black-and-white and color photographs in her elegant, tightly edited book may seem random—the coiled rind of a citrus fruit, a snail, an embrace between faceless figures, a spoonful of bees—but they cast a powerful spell, offering a seductive riposte to societal norms and whose meanings are at once defiant and appealingly shy.

Interesting Things by Salome Erni
Self-published, The Hague, Design by Salome Erni

Interesting Things examines a cache of fifty-nine photographic negatives from Palestine, originally taken by the Dutch photographer Frank Scholten during his travels to the region in the 1920s. Instead of allowing the images alone to tell the story of Palestine, Salome Erni and her collaborators make written interventions to the original captions. In Erni’s sparse design, which references the texture of an off-white sachet, the colonial baggage of these images exists alongside the preciousness. That these photographs—which depict Palestinian people before the mass displacements of 1948—eventually ended up in the Special Collections Department of Leiden University Libraries in the Netherlands labeled “Des Choses Intéressantes” (Interesting things) is a testament not only to the way that Palestinians have been subject to Orientalism, objectification, and exoticism, but also to the way that Erni has used the photobook medium to find a glitch, however small, in an oppressive political matrix that seems impossible to challenge. “I think we all tend to think of archives as these fixed parts of history that are just like set in stone,” says juror Paul Moakley. “It’s very powerful to see the next generation very clearly engage with a history that is well documented while bringing a new perspective.”

Unveiling by Alanna Fields
Meteoro Editions, Amsterdam, Design by Brian Paul Lamotte

Alanna Fields’s Unveiling is an exploration of Black queer identity from the 1920s through the 1990s. After seven years of searching for herself in Black archives with scant results, Fields created veils out of translucent Japanese kozo paper dipped in colored beeswax—with some placed directly on canvas—to convey the subtleties and erasures of being Black and queer in America. The book comprises four of the artist’s projects—As We Were (2019–23), Audacity (2020), Constellations: Our Love Was Deeply Purple (2021), Mirages of Dreams Past (2021–23)—and features poetry by Sumia Juxun. Unfolding in loose chronological order, the veils slowly become more transparent as we approach the present, a reminder of how time can peel back layers of silence and omission. As the veils thin, what was once obscured begins to emerge, charting a path toward visibility, remembrance, and self-recognition.

Photographs (1978–1985) by Christine Furuya-Gössler
Chose Commune, Marseille, France, Design by Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi and Perrine Serre

Christine Furuya-Gössler entered the photographic canon long ago—not as an image maker but as the recurring muse of her husband, the photographer Seiichi Furuya. Only in 2018 did Furuya discover a trove of unseen color and black-and-white photographs taken by his wife, thirty-three years after her suicide. Her work sat in an attic untouched for decades before being compiled in Photographs (1978–1985), an oblique meditation on marriage, motherhood, travel, memory, and the camera’s gaze (in some images, she appears to photograph her husband just as he’s photographing her). Its front cover graced by a self-portrait reproduced in pale pink, its back cover depicting foaming waves, the softcover volume is sumptuously printed but retains a scrapbook’s intimate feel and pace. While closely intertwined with the oeuvre of her husband, Furuya-Gössler’s photographic life stands alone in this tender and modest presentation as a profound account of an indelible subjectivity, shadowed by the painful fact of its loss.

Angan-Angan Harsa by Farid Renais Ghimas
Jordan, jordan Édition, Jakarta, Design by Jordan Marzuki

Nostalgia has a speed. In Angan-Angan Harsa, a slim book with a bold, color blocked linen cover and stylish typography, a state of looking back renders the pace of everyday life in Bengkulu, Indonesia, to a near standstill. The photographer Farid Renais Ghimas grew up in Indonesia and left to study abroad in London in 2018. In 2022, he returned for a visit and made a series of incandescent multigenerational portraits of friends, family, and strangers living on the southwest coast of Sumatra Island, all of which are printed full bleed on sheets cut with a grinded-edge finish. These are photographs of the inconspicuous: the sunlit ice cream cone held for dear life against a bustling crowd, the reticulated shadow of a flower ascending, or descending, concrete steps, the soccer ball floating like a crescent moon just beyond a sun-drenched horizon. “The process of capturing these fleeting, mundane, yet joyous moments triggered those visceral memories, transporting me back to those simpler times,” Ghimas recalls. Nostalgia hinges on an acute awareness of the present. All that’s left is a beautiful remembering.

Our Hidden Room by Mohamed Hassan
Ediciones Posibles, Fundación Photographic Social Vision, and Editorial RM, Barcelona; PHREE, Madrid, Design by Brian Carroll

A haunting dialogue between father and son, Mohamed Hassan’s Our Hidden Room weaves a sinuous tale about the power of art to make—and withhold—meaning in the aftermath of suffering. Orphaned at a young age, Hassan’s father took refuge in photography while serving in the Egyptian Army. He was eventually discharged due to his struggles with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and, devastated, began to spend more time in his hidden darkroom, opening his own photography business in Alexandria. As Hassan’s father struggled with his mental health, his mother grew increasingly under the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, condemning her husband’s photography as harem and burning his negatives. In his first photobook, Hassan intersperses his late father’s photographs with his own enigmatic portraits of men and landscapes, offering a simmering meditation on masculinity and family trauma in contemporary Egypt.

Sacred Place by Balarama Heller
TIS Books, New York, Design by Balarama Heller, David Schnapper, and Carl Wooley

In 2019, Balarama Heller joined the millions of people who have made the pilgrimage to the Indian town of Vrindavan, said to be the deity Krishna’s childhood home. The trip was deeply personal for Heller, who grew up in (and later left) the Hare Krishna movement in the United States. Across seventy-six full-bleed pages edged in lilac, Sacred Place sequences a chain of photographs made in Vrindavan in the hours before sunrise, a time Heller considers the material and spiritual worlds to be at their most permeable. “This book is one of a handful of entries this year that explore things we can’t necessarily see concretely,” says juror Florian Koenigsberger. “It’s still narrative-driven, but the storytelling is open-ended, never didactic.” Images of spectral figures and temples, a ringing bell, barbed wire, nature, and less easily identified phenomena—printed with a radiant attention to color—share a distinctly lambent quality, as though suffused with a mystical aura acquired over millennia.

Route de la belle etoile (Route of the beautiful star) by Daniel Stephen Homer
GOST Books, London, Design by GOST

There is something ancient and universal about the desire to gaze up at the night sky. Even in our age of scientific knowledge, where deep space has been probed with imaging satellites and powerful telescopes, the enduring mysteries of the cosmos continue to compel us to look upward. Route de la belle etoile (Route of the beautiful star) by Daniel Stephen Homer gazes into a contemporary culture of amateur astronomy in locations around the world and those citizen scientists whose meaningful contributions to academic research often go unnoticed. Homer’s own gaze is reserved and highly formal; he prefers to focus on the geometries of astronomical tools and technology and the architecture of makeshift observatories in backyards. The rich tonal range of Homer’s black-and-white photographs and the textures of ambient light and the dark, nocturnal shadows are sumptuously reproduced on a heavy, coated paper stock. A visual postscript to the plates includes large-format “star glass” annotated negatives of the night sky from Harvard College Observatory. Abstract and mysterious, they evince a parallel spirit of experimentation and wonder.

Frida Forever by Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø
Disko Bay, Copenhagen, Design by Spine Studio

Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø’s life changed forever in 2012, when the young Danish photographer fell from a bridge and broke her back. Rendered paraplegic, she was later diagnosed with a cellular abnormality and subjected to more than one hundred operations. Jersø’s experience in and out of the hospital would become the physical and psychological landscape of Frida Forever, a bracing, clear-eyed chronicle about sickness and survival that never once veers into the realm of despair. In the book, she mixes photographic styles—diaristic close-ups and poised self-portraiture—and in her work broadly, she summons as an inspiration Frida Kahlo, who continued to paint even as she was bedridden due to spinal surgeries. (Their shared first name is a startling coincidence.) The purple leatherette cover is a reference to Jersø’s “purse obsession,” as she notes in memoir-style captions—a purse, which she bought while in the hospital, is seen hanging from an IV trolley as if through X-ray. Some readers may flinch at the depiction of scars and blood, but they serve as proof of existence. “I want people to experience some discomfort when looking at my pictures and to feel an appropriate amount of death anxiety,” she writes.

Tiger’s Eye by Heba Khalifa
Self-published, Waziz Books, Cairo, Design by Nike Dieterich

Heba Khalifa’s book Tiger’s Eye is an act of becoming. The title comes from an insult in Arab culture used to describe a disobedient woman’s gaze. Using a visual narrative centered on Cairo, Khalifa delves deep into her own personal domestic memories through experimental photomontage, journaling, and reworked family photographs to surface and ultimately transmute her repressed pain of sexual assault and silencing. Eyes magnify and multiply; female faces are manipulated and made mirror images of one another. Khalifa’s memory becomes her weapon and her truth. By reconstructing these visual fragments of her past, she creates a space for symbolic healing and self-redefinition. In doing so, Tiger’s Eye becomes a vision of strength—a gaze that dares to shift history and reclaim life. Khalifa is thinking of “a way to push against things that have been placed against her or placed on her,” says juror Keisha Scarville. “There’s an act of liberation that comes up through telling her own story.”

The Dog Sat Where We Parted by Mahmoud Khattab
Self-published, Cairo, Design by Mahmoud Khattab

In 2017, Mahmoud Khattab spent a year in the Egyptian Army as a doctor. The Dog Sat Where We Parted recounts Khattab’s year in national service, weaving together photographs and poetic journal-like entries to create a quiet reckoning with solitude, anonymity, obedience, and the fleeting kinship of military conscription. In the book, the vastness of the desert and Antar, a stray dog who became Khattab’s companion, become central characters and personify the loneliness of being a soldier. The book’s cover is as restrained and contemplative as the interior, depicting a soldier holding a gun in silhouette—alone.

There Is a Big River, in Which There Is a Big Island, in Which There Is a Lake, in Which There Is an Island, in Which There Is a Small House, Where a Life Is Growing in a Womb by András Ladocsi
VOID, Athens, Design by João Linneu and Myrto Steirou

Bodies push against the frame of András Ladocsi’s camera in There Is a Big River. From a tight crop on a newborn’s navel, emphasizing the strangeness of infancy, to a portrait of a man’s face half submerged in water, full figures are never realized, and appendages are reduced to forms and gesture. Photographing friends over the course of six years, Ladocsi pays precise attention to light, color, and direction, creating a beautifully rendered record of collaboration between subject and photographer. A deliberate rhythmic approach to sequencing and a spacious layout with one image per double-page spread allow the compositional quality of the images to shine. Ladocsi cleverly parallels the forms of the body and those found in the natural world, drawing connections between emotion, physicality, and the environment. The softbound cover elevates form and gesture into an emotional, psychological realm.

Small Death by Martha Naranjo Sandoval
MACK, London, Design by Martha Naranjo Sandoval and Morgan Crowcroft-Brown

Who do we become when we leave home? Martha Naranjo Sandoval arrived in New York from Mexico City in 2014. As a young person, she recalls looking at the many photographs her father took during her childhood and the record of experience they would provide in the future. “In many ways I’ve carried this desire to document my life with me, and when I moved from Mexico to the States, I took a film camera and started photographing my new life,” she recounts in her acknowledgments in Small Death, the only text in her small but unusually potent first book. A diaristic portrayal of the loss and disruption of emigration, told through strips and isolated frames of Fujifilm 200 35mm color slide film, Small Death is filled with dreamlike self-portraits, surrealistic cityscapes, and revealing images of Naranjo Sandoval’s parents, husband, and siblings. Throughout, Naranjo Sandoval’s work evinces a compelling combination of candor and precision, and the bold red cover signals the confidence of arrival.

Lusaka Street by Alick Phiri
Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium, Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt

The story of twentieth-century African photography is often one of discovery and rediscovery, as archives arrive on the doorsteps of museums or publishers like long lost relatives. Alick Phiri, who was born in Zimbabwe, learned photography as a teenager at Photo Art Studios in Lusaka, Zambia, in the mid-1960s, and continued working there for thirty years. Today, at age seventy-five, he’s one of the few living Black Zambian practitioners from that mid-century heyday of postcolonial optimism, whose archive of black-and-white portraits represents a window onto Zambia’s culture at a moment of social and political transformation. Like Sanlé Sory in Burkina Faso and Jacques Toussele in Cameroon, Phiri had a commercial practice and was attuned to self-styling of his clients, posing many with the street as a backdrop—a “liberated vision” as Sana Ginwalla notes in an essay for Lusaka Street, Phiri’s first book. “His book is a reminder and a response to the historical gaps in how Zambia is remembered,” Ginwalla adds. “It is a call for us to reconsider how we look at the past. A gentle act of revolt in re-remembering.”

My father died three times / Meu pai morreu três vezes by Clara Simas
Propágulo, Recife, Brazil, Design by Clara Simas and Estúdio Ligatura

Clara Simas’s My father died three times tells stories about Simas’s absent father, who worked as journalist and actor in Bahia’s Cinema Marginal and Pernambuco’s Super-8 Film Cycle during the 1960s and 1970s in Brazil. Images in the book come from different visual sources and are mixed and matched in a hallucinatory way that alternates between documentary and fiction—a kind of visual autofiction—piecing together a fabulated narrative to fill the physical and symbolic void of her father. The book’s trim size evokes a novel, and the repetition of certain images or zoomed-in crops that shimmer in the moiré pattern of analog surveillance stills create the atmosphere of a suspenseful interrogation. Simas includes three as-told-to accounts by her father’s sister, a friend, and his ex-partner, whose voices emerge like narrators in a documentary film, always circling the elusive subject but unable to pin him down.

PhotoBook of the Year

The Classroom by Hicham Benohoud
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio

In the early 1990s, Hicham Benohoud was a jaded high school art teacher in Marrakech. Like his students, who came from underprivileged backgrounds, he felt trapped by the stultifyingly rigid power structures of postcolonial Morocco. So he started to improvise photoshoots to pass the time, transforming his four-hour class into a site of joyful photographic ingenuity and hands-on learning. Made between 1992 and 2002, the black-and-white photographs of The Classroom show Benohoud’s pupils posing against makeshift backdrops and behind paper cages, at desks stacked atop other desks, with Hula-Hoops and in surreal outfits crafted with long cardboard tubes or plastic bags, their faces often playfully obscured. “This book stopped me in my tracks,” says juror Florian Koenigsberger. “Above all, I’m attracted to the resourcefulness of the work. I think it’s a model for creativity in a lot of ways, of making the most of what you have. It offers a beautiful perspective on imagination.”

A Discreet Exit Through Darkness & Things We Lost Last Night by Soumya Sankar Bose
Self-published / Red Turtle Photobook and Mandas, Kolkata, India, Design by Barnali Bose

Ambitious and compelling, A Discreet Exit Through Darkness & Things We Lost Last Night recasts a harrowing family mystery: the disappearance of Soumya Sankar Bose’s mother in 1969 and her unexplained return years later. A veteran film director, Bose, who is based in Kolkata, India, presents two distinct perspectives to narrate his story—diary entries from his grandfather’s searching for his missing daughter and recorded narratives from his mother’s fractured memories. (An insert for the book includes the texts in Bengali.) Designed to be flipped over and read beginning from two different covers, the structure cleverly mediates the dual perspectives. Bose’s photographs convey fluency in multiple visual grammars—staged portraits, haunting landscapes, interventions with vernacular family photos—all united by a dark, unflinching attention to narrative and atmosphere. Interweaving text and image, A Discreet Exit is a riveting, fraught, and innovative account of family trauma and its generational reverberations.

Personal Ads by Pippa Garner
Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium, Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt

The late Pippa Garner made a career of playfully incisive works that challenged the boundaries of consumer culture and gender identity. Personal Ads is an exploration of the artist’s ability not only to reimagine but also to interrogate the structures of our everyday lives. The volume draws from Garner’s archive of photographs, bringing together candid snapshots, editorials, and performance documentation that foreground her distinctly subversive vision. “I was just taken by the book immediately, this retro sensibility that feels like the style of photography that a lot of photographers are referencing right now,” says juror Paul Moakley. A wry sense of humor and lightness is seen across the book and especially in its design, reflected most prominently in the bright purple cover complete with a demure but fanciful script for the title. Personal Ads also serves as a reminder that fashion can be a vehicle for personal and political expression. “If Garner sees fashion as a language for customizing the body and expanding the limits of gender, art is a means of communication,” writes the editor Giorgia Basch, “and as such it encapsulates both self-assertion and a vision of the world outside the self.”

Flowers Drink the River by Pia-Paulina Guilmoth
STANLEY/BARKER, London, Design by ramel·luzoir

Under the moonlight, in the dark cover of the night, Pia-Paulina Guilmoth guides us into a nocturnal dreamscape that reveals the beauty and resilience born from transformation. Flowers Drink the River spans the first two years of Guilmoth’s gender transition, when she began photographing her community in rural Maine, exploring both the joy and terror of life as a trans woman in a small right-wing town. Using a large-format camera and a heavy flash, Guilmoth oscillates between the mystical and ominous, and each frame feels as if it’s a small moment captured mid-ritual, leaving us to imagine what transpires outside the frame. Spiderwebs and moths sparkle against darkness; mud-drenched bodies intertwine in fields; and landscapes shimmer with an almost ethereal haze. Flowers Drink the River blends Guilmoth’s mystical yet exacting view upon her own search for resistance, magic, and safety in a world often devoid of it.

The Great Room by Katherine Hubbard
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio

The Great Room is an elegiac meditation on the nature of care, memory, and grief. In 2020, Katherine Hubbard’s mother began experiencing severe memory loss and was diagnosed with LATE, a brain disease that mimics the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. This began an ongoing collaboration with her mother, in which their daily routines (such as bathing, organizing, watching television) transform into layered black-and-white scenes. As a result, a tense, almost psychological air fills Hubbard’s large-format photographs, which resist the boundaries of documentary or staged photographs, instead quietly entangling both the real and the performed. Mirrors are an ongoing motif, allowing Hubbard to simultaneously insert herself into the images while placing an irrevocable distance between mother and daughter—and, by extension, past and present. “Hubbard has a really beautiful way of dissecting and thinking about the psychology of something,” notes juror Keisha Scarville. The radical softness throughout The Great Room envisions the home as a space where photography can reimagine the slow grief of dementia into a powerful act of preservation and love.

Anton’s Hand Is Made of Guilt. No Muscle or Bone. He Has a Gung-Ho Finger & a Grief-Stricken Thumb. by Edgar Martins
The Moth House, Bedford, United Kingdom, Design by Pedro Falcão

In 2011, the South African and Austrian photojournalist Anton Hammerl was killed by government forces while on assignment covering the First Libyan Civil War. Fourteen years later, the photographer Edgar Martins, a close friend of Hammerl’s, reconciles this past and the traumatic aftermath to create a poignantly complicated, highly researched, and sardonic inquiry into the purpose of documents. Anton’s Hand Is Made of Guilt comprises two books (one of which houses drawings inscribed on a facsimile of Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book), and one album of soundscapes that together trace a search for meaning with no clear-cut answers. Tightly cropped, oblique images of mutilated bodies are buffered by expansive white borders, charcoal drawings, and screenshots of pro-Gaddafi Facebook posts that intervene against the appearance of vivid reportage. Emanating from this tripartite volume is an incredulous argument for photography—only one in which closure and the declarative is withheld.

Kalabongó by Jorge Panchoaga
Editorial RM and Paloma Ediciones, Spain, Design by Estudio Herrera and Jorge Panchoaga

As the story goes, the first free people who founded San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia, were guided there by light of fireflies. Home, freedom, was found in the dark of night. Nighttime has always been a wellspring for the narrative. How many stories are first fleshed out around a campfire? Kalabongó (the Palenquero word for fireflies) is a visually resplendent book that incorporates folktales, firsthand memories, and portraits of descendants of those first free people who escaped slavery in the seventeenth century. Working with the community, the Colombian photographer Jorge Panchoaga brings together striking images that highlight the nonliteral or incongruent, those mysterious inflections that summon the magic thread of story. Richly printed paper in witching-hour red blinds the eye after extended viewing. Something is seen after the book is put down, an afterimage, or is it flame, the light of freedom?

Ripples in the Pond by Bharat Sikka
Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen

Bharat Sikka’s record of collaboration with the Dutch designer Hans Gremmen has been nothing short of superb—and Ripples in the Pond represents another triumph of the photobook as a form and object. A kaleidoscopic sequence of sepia-toned photographs loosely explores Makharda, a township on the outskirts of Kolkata, India, and surrounding landscape, which includes numerous ponds. Reflections are both a leitmotif and a strategy for Sikka—images of water reappear throughout the sequence, but he also utilizes a scanning strategy that distorts and fragments images as if looking through an old television screen. In these manipulations, Sikka references Malgudi Days, a TV show from the 1980s that focused on the small dramas of community life. Textural, stylized, and exquisitely printed, Sikka delivers another layered, riveting experiment.

Echo in Delirium by Éva Szombat
Symposion and Everybody Needs Art, Budapest, Design by Anna Bárdy

Wacky and irreverent, Echo in Delirium takes on the kitsch, trends, and ersatz goods of 1980s and ’90s pop culture to create a book that feels like a fever dream of a bygone era. A zany, accordion-fold cover reveals a small, spiral-bound book-block in which vibrant color images are printed full bleed on uncoated paper. Foldouts wryly labeled “Open Here” reveal larger landscapes. Most of Szombat’s photographs are delightful observations of cultural remnants from public space and domestic interiors—a set of doors has been decaled with a surreal Mr. Bean montage, or a life-size Terminator figurine stands awkwardly in the corner of a room. “This book is delivering humor, which is so necessary to all of our lives,” observes juror Paul Moakley. “The sense of humor is really matched by the design.” By making us look and look again, Szombat reveals the irony in these repetitions, pastiches, and echoes of our lingering cultural obsessions.

INDEX ²⁰²⁵ by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa
Roma Publications, Amsterdam, Design by Roger Willems

The spiral-bound INDEX ²⁰²⁵, by the peripatetic writer and photographer Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, is a scholastic riddle. Like any good one, the book draws its energy from possibility, the potential that answers may come into existence from an unassuming set of clues: 122 works, 105 titles, 247 reproductions, and 11,639 words that at first glance repeat, annotate, and reference themselves nonsensically. Halfway through, a list of names, years, titles, venues, cities, and countries is given stage business: the work that these citations constitute and enshrine is not entirely present. What’s here instead is a suite of subscript words defining exquisitely mundane black-and-white photographs that appear to resist definition: a garage door in Boston, a statue in Virginia, a typewriter in Rhode Island, a brick wall in London. “It’s a book that’s really meant to be read page by page,” notes juror Anna Planas. “A book that reveals itself slowly through the use of images, the use of repetition.”

Photography Catalog of the Year

Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain, Edited by Renée Mussai
Thames & Hudson and Autograph, London, Design by Fraser Muggeridge Studio

Black Chronicles is the culmination of an expansive research project, initiated by Autograph, a London-based institution focused on photography’s relation to race and social justice, that reveals Black lives in nineteenth-century Britain through an astonishing array of studio portraits. But the book, according to the curator and editor Renée Mussai, is decidedly not a traditional catalog or historical survey. “It is a re/orienting ‘gathering’ of archival images from the past, reconstituted in the aliveness of the present,” she writes in the book’s introduction. The design privileges the intensity of gazes between photographers and subjects through outstanding reproduction, which also allows for clothing, jewelry, and hairstyles, and the writing on cartes-de-visite and album pages to be visible with a startling clarity of detail. Since 2014, various exhibitions of Black Chronicles have traveled around the world, and the photographs have always been presented against a matte-black background, as though emerging from a dark archive, and complemented by quotes and commentary in large white letters—a scholarly yet interrogative method carried into the book, with its cocoon-like atmosphere amplified by the black-dyed edges of the paper. Mussai’s meticulous biographical notes on numerous sitters are an immense and compelling resource, but she adds that many are still “not-yet-identified,” meaning there is more work to be done. History, as Black Chronicles vividly illustrates, is constantly under revision.

Calamita/à: An Investigation into the Vajont Catastrophe, Edited by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve
Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen

A horrific environmental disaster is the subject of Calamita/à: An Investigation into the Vajont Catastrophe, a book about the hubris of man and the power of nature. On October 9, 1963, a landslide into a lake formed by a hydroelectric dam on the Vajont River, in northeastern Italy, caused a megatsunami, pouring more than sixty million cubic meters of water into the Piave Valley with a shockwave force of two atomic bombs. Entire villages were instantly erased, and some two thousand people were killed. The Italian government was blamed for negligence, having ignored reports of unstable rock in the region of the dam. But this information comes at the end of Calamita/à, the culmination of an ambitious, multidisciplinary research inquiry launched in 2013 by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve, who sought a “collective vision” through a network of photographers and writers. The book opens with a prose poem and steers the reader through numerous portfolios that document the Vajont area today, with digressions into archival images and news reports, all in the service of reinscribing the catastrophe into public memory—and alerting us, as the editors write, to “the arrogance of the ruling class, the cowardly silence of the press, and the vain search for justice.”

Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini: Nous Autres (We Others), Edited by Nathalie Chapuis and Camille Cibot
Atelier EXB and LE BAL, Paris, Design by Coline Aguettaz

Nous Autres (We Others) is the first monograph of the American photographer Donna Gottschalk, who, from the late 1960s to 1990, photographed in Alphabet City, the bohemian downtown neighborhood in New York. Pictures of sparse storefronts, beauty salons, and dilapidated or boarded-up buildings not only give record to a New York vanished to time but also serve as a backdrop to an intimate, personal archive. The clarion immediacy of Gottschalk’s portraits lend visibility to the lesbian, trans, and gay rights activists who gave life and blood to the 1970s LGBTQI+ movement. But as an essay, written by Hélène Giannecchini in conversation with Gottschalk, makes clear, these young activists were also friends, family, and lovers. “You see all of these beautiful moments of community and coming together,” juror Paul Moakley notes, “but you’re also seeing the more intimate side of life.” As a dialogue between word and image, the biographical narrative and photographs provide insight to a burgeoning political movement but one seen from its private quarters—late mornings in bed, recumbent afternoons, and nights brimming with possibility.

Generalized Visual Resistance: Photobooks and Liberation Movements, Edited by Catarina Boieiro and Raquel Schefer
ATLAS, Lisbon, Design by Teo Furtado and Ana Schefer

“The history of photobooks looks different from the vantage point of the African continent,” Drew Thompson writes in Generalized Visual Resistance: Photobooks and Liberation Movements, a vigorous anthology about the links between photography and anticolonial politics from the 1960s to the 1980s, when Portugal’s former colonies in Africa fought for independence. The product of a research initiative begun in 2018—with texts in English, French, and Portuguese—this book spotlights organizations such as the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), which was instrumental in producing photobooks wielded by activists to inspire international solidarity. Covers and spreads from rare publications are reproduced throughout, displaying an immense range of visual communication strategies that often put a premium on dramatic, high-impact images, and showing how politically motivated publishers in Maputo, Mozambique, as well as Amsterdam, Moscow, San Francisco, and Tokyo, envisioned Africa’s freedom and self-determination.

The Lure of the Image, Edited by Marco De Mutiis, Gwendolyn Fässler, Doris Gassert, and Alessandra Nappo
Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Spector Books, Leipzig, Germany, Design by UNSTATED

The Lure of the Image is the name of the multipronged project by Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, exploring the role of digital photographic images and the reactions they compel in their spectators and in our networked visual culture. A resulting publication comes in the form of 226 loose-leaf pages collected in a sleek two-ring binder that appears to reference 1990s-era computer manuals but is also adorned with bold black text against a soft millennial-pink background. Containing portfolios from fourteen artists, each section, introduced by an essay and an interview between the author and the artist, is an immersive set of familiar but meaningfully recontextualized internet visuals—from 3-D modeling programs and AI images to memes or ASMR compilations, to reflections on the effects of the circulation of graphic representations of violence. “The additive nature of the binder reminds you that this work is dealing with the internet as a corpus, and therefore can’t be defined as finished or closed,” juror Florian Koenigsberger says. “It makes consequence of a mass of information that we’re inundated with, without losing the seriousness and punch of some of the stories that are highlighted.”

Paiter Suruí, Gente de verdade: Um projeto do Coletivo Lakapoy, Edited by Thyago Nogueira, Txai Suruí, and Lahayda Mamani Poma
Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo, Design by Estúdio Daó

Cameras were first introduced into the Sete de Setembro Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon in the late 1960s. Photography was often utilized as a tool for justifying the oppression of Indigenous peoples, fixing the idea of otherness through ethnographic studies and voyeuristic travelogues. But pictures could also be “turned into weapons that protect identity and territory,” as the Coletivo Lakapoy note in a curatorial statement for Paiter Suruí, True People, an exhibition of more than eight hundred photographs and videos presented by the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo. The accompanying catalog toggles between historical and contemporary images with commentary by many of the subjects and strident essays by writers including the influential young activist Txai Suruí. A collaborative project akin to a community’s vast family album, Paiter Suruí is both a celebration and a warning, as right-wing politicians in Brazil continue to threaten Indigenous lands and survival. “This is our story,” the curators write, “told our way.”

Special Mention

Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing Could Have Prepared Us—Everything Could Have Prepared Us, Edited by Florian Ebner and Olga Frydryszak-Rétat
Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Spector Books, Leipzig, Germany, Design by deValence

In the summer of 2025, Wolfgang Tillmans presented a massive intervention in the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (BPI) at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the public library which, for generations, has been a center of learning about art and culture. Tillmans was given carte blanche to take over the library for a career retrospective, the museum’s last project before closing for a five-year renovation. Most of the furniture was cleared out, but he kept a few shelves for books and set up video screens in a cluster of carrels. Everywhere Tillmans’s own photographs appeared in conversation with the idiosyncratic architecture—the purple and green carpet, the photocopy room, the fire safety equipment—and vitrines displayed rows of tear sheets from his magazine commissions and novels to which he lent photographs for the covers. The exhibition was displayed in miniature, in the form of a scale model from the photographer’s studio as he prepared for the project, and is seen across the catalog in immersive installation views. As a record of a remarkable museum experience, which itself was about the production of knowledge, the jury recognizes Wolfgang Tillmans: Nothing Could Have Prepared Us—Everything Could Have Prepared Us, a publication demonstrating excellence in design and scholarship, and extolling the pleasures of reading.

Contributions by Brendan Embser, Zack Hatfield, Jane’a Johnson, Noa Lin, Freddy Martinez, Mira Maxwell, and Cassidy Paul.

This year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received over one thousand books from fifty-five countries around the world, including standout entries from Ecuador, Lesotho, Uruguay, and Vietnam. On September 17–19, the 2025 shortlist jury met in New York for three concentrated days of review and deliberation by an international team: Brendan Embser, senior editor, Aperture; Florian Koenigsberger, technologist and photographer; Paul Moakley, executive producer, The New Yorker; Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo; and Keisha Scarville, artist.

“The 2025 PhotoBook Awards shortlist represents an extraordinary range of artistic styles, geographic perspectives, and design innovation, showing how the photobook remains one of the most compelling and effective vehicles for storytelling today,” says Brendan Embser. “From catalogs that consider how digital images have entered the hard drive of our lives, to intensely personal chronicles of individuals facing the extremities of politics and the desire for freedom, these publications speak to a year of vitality and achievement by independent publishers and artists.” Anna Planas adds, “Displayed on the balconies of the Grand Palais during Paris Photo, the shortlisted titles of the PhotoBook Awards will captivate an international audience and stand as one of the most anticipated highlights of the fair.” 

The shortlisted books will be exhibited at Paris Photo, open to the public from November 13 through November 16, followed by an international tour, including in New York at Printed Matter, in January 2026, among other venues to be announced.

On Thursday, November 13, a final jury composed of five members will meet in Paris to select the winners for all three prizes, which will be revealed on Friday, November 14, at 3:00 p.m. (CET), at a ceremony at Paris Photo, and announced on Aperture.org and Parisphoto.com.

Below, see the thirty-seven selected titles for the 2025 PhotoBook Awards shortlist.

First PhotoBook

Eleonora Agostini, A Study on Waitressing, Witty Books, Turin, Italy. Design by Massimiliano Pace

Genesis Báez, Blue Sun / Sol Azul, Capricious Publishing, New York. Design by Studio Lin

Hélène Bellenger, Bianco Ordinario, Editions de l’Observeur, Vinzelles, France. Design by Hugo Berger and Eleonora Paciullo

Widline Cadet, Ritual [Dis]Appearance / Seremoni Disparisyon, Black Mountains Studio, Los Angeles. Design by Blake Duncanson and Widline Cadet

Daniel Chatard, Niemandsland, The Eriskay Connection, Breda, the Netherlands. Design by Carel Fransen

Louise Desnos, Acedia, Witty Books, Turin, Italy. Design by Ilaria Miotto

Salome Erni, Interesting Things, Self-published, The Hague. Design by Salome Erni

Alanna Fields, Unveiling, Meteoro Editions, Amsterdam. Design by Brian Paul Lamotte

Christine Furuya-Gössler, Photographs (1978–1985), Chose Commune, Marseille, France. Design by Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi and Perrine Serre

Farid Renais Ghimas, Angan-Angan Harsa, Jordan, jordan Édition, Jakarta. Design by Jordan Marzuki

Mohamed Hassan, Our Hidden Room, Ediciones Posibles, Fundación Photographic Social Vision, and Editorial RM, Barcelona; PHREE, Madrid. Design by Brian Carroll

Balarama Heller, Sacred Place, TIS Books, New York. Design by Balarama Heller, David Schnapper, and Carl Wooley

Daniel Stephen Homer, Route de la belle etoile (Route of the beautiful star), GOST Books, London. Design by GOST

Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø, Frida Forever, Disko Bay, Copenhagen. Design by Spine Studio

Heba Khalifa, Tiger’s Eye, Self-published, Waziz Books, Cairo. Design by Nike Dieterich

Mahmoud Khattab, The Dog Sat Where We Parted, Self-published, Cairo. Design by Mahmoud Khattab

András Ladocsi, There Is a Big River . . ., VOID, Athens. Design by João Linneu and Myrto Steirou

Martha Naranjo Sandoval, Small Death, MACK, London. Design by Martha Naranjo Sandoval and Morgan Crowcroft-Brown

Alick Phiri, Lusaka Street, Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium. Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt

Clara Simas, My father died three times / Meu pai morreu três vezes, Propágulo, Recife, Brazil. Design by Clara Simas and Estúdio Ligatura

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PhotoBook of the Year

Hicham Benohoud, The Classroom, Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London. Design by Loose Joints Studio

Soumya Sankar Bose, A Discreet Exit Through Darkness & Things We Lost Last Night, Self-published / Red Turtle Photobook and Mandas, Kolkata, India. Design by Barnali Bose

Pippa Garner, Personal Ads, Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium. Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt

Pia-Paulina Guilmoth, Flowers Drink the River, STANLEY/BARKER, London. Design by ramel·luzoir

Katherine Hubbard, The Great Room, Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London. Design by Loose Joints Studio

Edgar Martins, Anton’s Hand Is Made of Guilt. No Muscle or Bone. He Has a Gung-Ho Finger & a Grief-Stricken Thumb., The Moth House, Bedford, United Kingdom. Design by Pedro Falcão

Jorge Panchoaga, Kalabongó, Editorial RM and Paloma Ediciones, Spain. Design by Estudio Herrera and Jorge Panchoaga

Bharat Sikka, Ripples in the Pond, Fw:Books, Amsterdam. Design by Hans Gremmen

Éva Szombat, Echo in Delirium, Symposion and Everybody Needs Art, Budapest. Design by Anna Bárdy

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, INDEX 2025, Roma Publications, Amsterdam. Design by Roger Willems

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Photography Catalog of the Year

Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain. Edited by Renée Mussai, Thames & Hudson and Autograph, London. Design by Fraser Muggeridge Studio

Calamita/á: An Investigation into the Vajont Catastrophe. Edited by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve, Fw:Books, Amsterdam. Design by Hans Gremmen

Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini: Nous Autres (We Others). Edited by Nathalie Chapuis and Camille Cibot, Atelier EXB and LE BAL, Paris. Design by Coline Aguettaz

Generalized Visual Resistance: Photobooks and Liberation Movements. Edited by Catarina Boieiro and Raquel Schefer, ATLAS, Lisbon. Design by Teo Furtado and Ana Schefer

The Lure of the Image. Edited by Marco De Mutiis, Gwendolyn Fässler, Doris Gassert, and Alessandra Nappo, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, and Spector Books, Leipzig, Germany. Design by UNSTATED

Paiter Suruí, Gente de verdade: Um projeto do Coletivo Lakapoy. Edited by Thyago Nogueira, Txai Suruí, and Lahayda Mamani Poma, Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo. Design by Estúdio Daó

Previous Next

Special Mention

The 2025 PhotoBook Awards winners will be announced at Paris Photo on Friday, November 14.

This year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received 940 books from fifty-nine countries around the world, including standout entries from Argentina, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. On September 18–20, the shortlist jury met in New York for three concentrated days of review and deliberation, narrowing the entries down to a shortlist of thirty-five titles. The shortlist jury consisted of the following international team: Negar Azimi, editor in chief, Bidoun; Jacqueline Bates, photography director, Opinion, New York Times; Michael Famighetti, editor in chief, Aperture; Nontsikelelo Mutiti, director of graduate studies in graphic design, Yale School of Art; and Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo. 

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PhotoBook Awards

A Look Inside the Titles Shortlisted for the 2024 PhotoBook Awards

A presentation of the thirty-five books shortlisted for the 2024 PhotoBook Awards is currently on view at Paris Photo through November 10 and will be on view at Printed Matter in New York, January through February 2025, and then to the Leipzig Photobook Festival, in Germany, in March, with additional venues to be announced.

Below, read about this year’s winning titles.

Photography Catalog of the Year

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain
Joy Gregory, editor, and Taous Dahmani, associate editor 
Autograph and MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown 

Shining Lights, edited by artist Joy Gregory and Taous Dahmani, is a restorative anthology that charts Black women’s essential but often overlooked contributions to Britain’s photography scene in the late twentieth century. Extensively researched and vividly illustrated, the book showcases a tremendous range of visual materials, including photographs from over fifty artists, archival images, documents, and more. This constellation of visual resources is carefully organized by theme—self-portraiture, family, and community activism—and includes scholarly essays, personal reflection, a roundtable discussion, and a detailed timeline. “I love the use of the materials; there’s a friendliness to the cardstock cover, and beautiful neon spine that carries through in how certain elements get highlighted within the running text,” remarks juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “For a project so comprehensive, it feels very generous and inviting. I’m so glad that this project exists.”

Maxine Walker, from the series Untitled, 1987
Courtesy the artist

Joy Gregory, Autoportrait, 1990
Commissioned by Autograph. Courtesy the artist

First PhotoBook Award

Born from the Same Root by Tsai Ting Bang
Self-published, Taipei, Design by Tsai Ting Bang and Shū Hé Zhì

Tsai Ting Bang’s Born from the Same Root forms a moving portrait of the artist’s older brother Hsien and reflects upon their shared family trauma. The boys grew up in separate homes, and as a young adult, Hsien began suffering from mental health issues and cut contact with the family for three years. Tsai uses the book to explore the estrangement, misrecognitions, and mystery at the heart of their bond, interweaving archival family photographs and his own tender portraits of Hsien and his day-to-day life. “The book tells a simple but powerful story and is full of lovely, unguarded moments,” says juror Anna Planas. The intimately sized volume involves a clever bipartite structure, forcing the reader to turn the pages of the book in opposition, as one might open a gatefold. Per Planas, “we loved how the design thoughtfully reflects both the distance and closeness of the brothers’ relationship.”

Tsai Ting Bang, from Born from the Same Root, 2024

PhotoBook of the Year

Disruptions by Taysir Batniji
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio 

Opaque, yet frighteningly urgent, Taysir Batniji’s Disruptions compiles pixelated screenshots from WhatsApp video calls to his family in Gaza, taken between April 2015 and June 2017. The fragmentary aesthetic of fragile phone connections offers a metaphor for the breakdown of the psyche in the midst of daily life compromised by conflict. This compact softcover houses about seventy images, which are accompanied by a poignant text from photo-historian Taous R. Dahmani. Amid warped portraits and pixelated landscapes, the viewer is confronted with bursts of vibrant color signaling failed communication, broken only by solid pages of green that display the date of each call. Disruptions is an oblique but essential reflection on life under occupation. “As Gaza is obliterated in real time, Batniji’s Disruptions is a timely reminder of the precarious nature of human life,” remarks juror Negar Azimi.

Taysir Batniji, from Disruptions, 2024

Jurors’ Special Mention

i am (not) your mother by Hady Barry 
Self-published, Penumbra Foundation, New York, Design by Hady Barry 

In 2002, amid a civil war, Hady Barry and her family fled Côte d’Ivoire to resettle in Senegal. As her mother left for the United States to seek asylum, and her father was mostly absent, traveling for work, Barry, age thirteen, found herself taking care of three younger siblings. Her self-published photobook i am (not) your mother interlaces portraits and documentary photographs, archival imagery, journal entries, and transcribed conversations, unpacking the trauma of an adolescence cut short by the tremendous responsibilities of parenting. The book’s imagery alternates between the vivid, nostalgic palette of rediscovered family photographs and the black-and-white of Barry’s own austere pictures of nature, people, and interiors. “There’s this parallel with her personal story and the personal way she made the publication,” says juror Anna Planas. The book’s smaller 6 ½-by-9 inch format and use of one-of-a-kind Risograph printing, befit the intimacy and rawness of Barry’s painful subject matter.

Hady Barry, from i am (not) your mother, 2024

An exhibition of 2024 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist will be on view at Paris Photo through November 10, and will travel to Printed Matter in New York City in January 2025.

This year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received 940 books from fifty-nine countries around the world, including standout entries from Argentina, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. This past September, the shortlist jury met in New York for three concentrated days of review and deliberation by an international team: Negar Azimi, editor in chief, Bidoun; Jacqueline Bates, photography director, Opinion, New York Times; Michael Famighetti, editor in chief, Aperture; Nontsikelelo Mutiti, director of graduate studies in graphic design, Yale School of Art; and Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo.

The shortlist represents more than just the most highly produced, classically beautiful books—it is also an expression of the possibilities of bookmaking across a broad spectrum of resources, intentions, and storytelling techniques. As jury member Michael Famighetti stated, “It was exciting to see such a range of ideas, topics, processes, and forms explored through the photobook. I’m grateful to the jury for dedicating so much time and care to reviewing the submissions, and to our community of dedicated bookmakers, photographers, and scholars for producing and submitting such a powerful selection of work.”

“Serving on the jury offered an intensive and rewarding view into the past year’s publications,” juror Jacqueline Bates observed. “Reviewing books from fifty-nine countries was an extraordinary task. Even among shared themes, each project took a different approach. Of the 940 entries, every single book was unique.”

Anna Planas, artistic director of Paris Photo, and Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo, commented: “The presentation of the shortlisted books at Paris Photo is one of the highlights of the event. The selections chosen for the PhotoBook Awards share an international vision of the production of photography books, and with the pulse of contemporary creativity, they embody the vitality of publishing today.”

A final jury will meet at Paris Photo to select the winners for all three prizes, which will be revealed on Friday, November 8. From there, the shortlisted books will be exhibited in Paris, followed by an international tour, including New York at Printed Matter, in January 2025, among other venues to be announced.

Below, read more about the thirty-five selected titles for the 2024 PhotoBook Awards shortlist.

First PhotoBook  

i am (not) your mother by Hady Barry 
Self-published, Penumbra Foundation, New York, Design by Hady Barry 

In 2002, amid a civil war, Hady Barry and her family fled Côte d’Ivoire to resettle in Senegal. As her mother left for the United States to seek asylum, and her father was mostly absent traveling for work, Barry, age thirteen, found herself taking care of three younger siblings. Her self-published photobook i am (not) your mother interlaces portraits and documentary photographs, archival imagery, journal entries, and transcribed conversations, unpacking the trauma of an adolescence cut short by the tremendous responsibilities of parenting. The book’s imagery alternates between the vivid, nostalgic palette of rediscovered family photographs and the black-and-white of Barry’s own austere pictures of nature, people, and interiors. “There’s this parallel with her personal story and the personal way she made the publication,” says juror Anna Planas. The book’s smaller 6 ½-by-9 inch format and use of one-of-a-kind Risograph printing befit the intimacy and rawness of Barry’s painful subject matter.

Silence Is a Gift by Ciro Battiloro
Chose Commune, Marseille, France, Design by Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi and Perrine Serre 

Ciro Battiloro’s Silence Is a Gift is an intimate glimpse of Southern Italy. In a geography that has long been mined by visiting artists, Battiloro, who is local to the area, photographs families in their homes, documenting small, personal moments of daily life. Silence Is a Gift strings together thoughtfully sequenced black-and-white images, respectfully printed with an ample border. Empathetic and respectful, they capture moments of joy and rest—children climbing through windows, a mother doing her daughter’s hair. The book’s cover is understated in its design, quietly inviting the viewer into the domestic world of the photographs. “Battiloro beautifully captures the deep love shared among these family members, infused with a sense of tenderness and playfulness,” says juror Jacqueline Bates. “The photographs strip away any sense of specific time or place, offering nuanced insight into life in Italy.”

Lebensborn: Birth Politics in the Third Reich by Angeniet Berkers 
The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Rob van Hoesel 

Lebensborn: Birth Politics in the Third Reich chronicles the grim history of Heinrich Himmler’s program to create an “Aryan” race. Implementing contraception and abortion bans along with tax breaks and incentives for procreation, the Nazis encouraged German citizens to have as many children as possible. This plan eventually failed, and they resorted to kidnapping thousands of children from Eastern Europe to be “Germanized.” Lebensborn presents a loose chronology of these policies, oscillating between archival materials and the artist’s own photography of historic locations and surviving victims, who provide personal testimony about the traumatic and tragic consequences of this plan. “This project is a necessary reminder of the vulnerability of children during times of conflict,” reflects juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “The book really succeeds in framing the systems of thinking that were used by the Nazi regime to construct this Aryan identity and also illustrates the lasting consequences of the horrors of that program.”

Rue Désiré Chevalier by Claire Cocano 
Self-published, Paris, Design by Claire Cocano 

Claire Cocano’s Rue Désiré Chevalier is a tender rumination on family, migration, and heritage. In the 1960s, Cocano’s grandparents migrated from Yugoslavia to France, settling permanently in an apartment where, more than forty years later, they would witness the dissolution of their home country. Throughout the softcover volume, Cocano weaves together her own images with a mix of family photos, journal entries and letters, and identity cards. These visuals are punctuated with two contrasting items: records of an employment rights agreement between Yugoslavia and France printed on translucent paper and a series of fabric blueprints that unfurl to reveal re-creations of Cocano’s grandmother’s embroideries. “The book design feels very intentional, unique,” notes juror Negar Azimi. “As if you’re entering an intimate zone—a familial and spiritual excavation at once.”

’Om (Mother) by Barbara Debeuckelaere 
The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Carel Fransen 

In her book ’Om (Mother), Barbara Debeuckelaere collaborates with eight Palestinian women to tell a different story about the Middle East. While media coverage of the ongoing occupation of Palestine tends to focus on men who are fighting on the ground, women are rarely depicted in their enduring efforts to protect their children and their homes. Providing them with cameras, Debeuckelaere asked eight women in Tel Rumeida to document their day-to-day realities. The resulting quiet, gentle snapshots of the home, friends, and family—often flooded with light leaks—offer an idiosyncratic, surprising take on life under occupation. Full-bleed photographs printed on 320 pages of newsprint are “artistic, often pleasingly oblique and surprising,” notes juror Negar Azimi. “The book, which is small in size, feels both immediate and intimate.”

27 Drafts by Simone Engelen
Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen 

In 2006, while on a high school year abroad in the United States, Simone Engelen was sexually assaulted. Years later, seeking closure, she returned with her mother and her camera. 27 Drafts documents Engelen’s interrogations of her memory through photography and printed handwriting, a hazy intervention into the artist’s own psyche. The images feel raw and forensic on the book’s black paper, like scenes from a nightmare—dark nights seen from the interior of a car, foggy landscapes, and reflecting pools. “The informal, softcover binding and sketchbook feel underscore the idea, suggested by the title, of an ongoing project to process the past,” notes juror Michael Famighetti. Beginning with spot-varnished type on the cover that resembles a scrawled page from a journal, 27 Drafts never strays from its deeply personal goals. Engelen has not made this book for others, but rather as a formal practice in confronting oneself and taking the steps toward healing.

If Time Does Not End by Janick Entremont
Self-published, Berlin, Design by Janick Entremont 

If life and death became a choice: What value would time have? This question is at the heart of Janick Entremont’s If Time Does Not End, a cerebral investigation into the growing phenomenon of cryopreservation. The ambitious experiment, called cryonics, hinges on the belief that future technology will gain the ability to reverse death, storing a patient’s body (or just their brain) in nitrogen-cooled tanks kept at -196 degrees Celsius. For this project, Entremont found himself traveling to the U.S., Norway, Spain, and Switzerland, photographing a range of believers, from CEOs to a man storing his grandfather on dry ice in his own garden. The book’s minimalist design is intermixed with blue-printed pages excerpted from an ominous “Revival Preference Statement” that details the morbid terms and conditions of freezing one’s body. “Entremont creates monumental, psychological portraits of people and places,” says juror Negar Azimi, “revolving around the endlessly interesting question: What would motivate someone to pursue eternal life?”

Sea Beach by Ismail Ferdous 
Imageless, Shanghai, Design by RELATED DEPARTMENT

Cox’s Bazar, the longest natural saltwater beach in the world, lies on the Bay of Bengal, in Bangladesh, and has been a destination for photographer Ismail Ferdous since he was young. The beach is a landmark where people from across districts, dialects, and regions come together in a communal crossroads, year after year. Ferdous captures the place with a dreamlike quality in Sea Beach, interlacing portraits and still lifes taken during the winter months that evoke nostalgic memories from his childhood. The stark-white hardcover is adorned with a small, glitter-coated image of a cotton candy vendor and suggests the playful, ethereal world of highlights and washed-out color within. “The addition of gatefolds adds whimsy to the sequence, infusing a sense of magical realism,” says juror Jacqueline Bates. “Ferdous conjures both pale and radiant light, depicting moments of leisure that feel celebratory.”

Control Refresh by Toma Gerzha 
The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Rob van Hoesel 

Control Refresh tells stories of Russian youth—Gen Z raised in the Putin era. Toma Gerzha, born in Moscow and now based in Amsterdam, photographed several remote cities over three years. Her images balance an outsider’s view with thoughtful introspection and describe the ennui of growing up while feeling constrained by an increasingly online world and the bleak geopolitics of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The book is carefully bound with orange thread and features a stylish bellyband jacket. “Its softcover, magazine-like feel makes for absorbing storytelling and interaction of text and image,” says juror Michael Famighetti. Through Gerzha’s understanding of her peers’ lived realities, and her own, Control Refresh is a unique portrait of young Russians at this fraught moment.

Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana by Virginia Hanusik 
Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, New York, Design by New Information, Dave Yun, and Inyeong Cho 

Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana essays the broad history of South Louisiana, invoking the climate crisis as a catalyst for reflection. Virginia Hanusik’s black-and-white photographs are respectful, detail-rich documents of landscape and architecture from the region. They punctuate texts that include her personal writing alongside a chorus of poems, reflections, and essays by local writers, scholars, artists, and activists. The black hardcover is an inviting, modest size. The opening text is printed on a brassy-brown, uncoated paper, and illustrations are tipped-in on smaller, white, coated sheets. “The size and design work wonderfully in service of the overall message” notes juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “It’s portable and accessible, and I think books dealing with this kind of information must be able to be shared easily.”

Rotting from Within by Abdulhamid Kircher 
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio 

In Rotting from Within, Abdulhamid Kircher contends with a complex family history and his own conceptions of masculinity. Born in Berlin, Kircher left for the United States as a child, leaving his abusive father behind. Only later, when he was seventeen, did he become more familiar with his father’s life in Turkey and Germany, including his incarceration. Kircher began spending summers in Berlin, documenting this new relationship with his father and, slowly, his disillusionment with him. Sequenced chronologically, some of the book’s pages contain a single photograph, while other spreads carry up to fifteen; the pacing balances the temporal gaps as Kircher leaves Berlin and returns the following year. His photographs remain caring and observational, open to understanding generational rifts and traditions. As juror Michael Famighetti notes, Rotting from Within is “an absorbing, diaristic chronicle of family that toggles between beauty and trauma.”

One Head and Thousand Years by Hassan Kurbanbaev 
Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium, Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt 

One Head and Thousand Years is a multivalent exploration of photographer Hassan Kurbanbaev’s search for identity, place, and connection within his home city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and the surrounding Chimgan Mountains. The slim paperback evokes a place and time; its narrative posits more questions than it answers. Kurbanbaev photographs everyday moments rich in symbolism. Crops of body parts, domestic details, posed portraiture, and landscapes are woven together into a surreal patchwork, centered on the vulnerability of living as an artist in a post-Soviet Muslim society. Printed with minimal margins on warm gray paper, One Head and Thousand Years is a textural, immersive experience. “There is an unearthly quality to the images,” says juror Jacqueline Bates, “absorbing the audience into a poetic meditation on the process of finding oneself.”

Pictures in My Hand of a Boy I Still Resemble by Srinivas Kuruganti 
Self-published / Marigold Books, Delhi, India, Design by Srinivas Kuruganti 

In Pictures in My Hand of a Boy I Still Resemble, Srinivas Kuruganti deftly mines his memories of a bygone era. Kuruganti came to the United States from India in 1986 as a student, and the photographs he made in the following years are a sun-soaked testament to a cultural scene both diasporic and distinctly American. The modest softcover contains only full-bleed photographs that provide a visual drumbeat—a sentimental yet ecstatic montage of Kuruganti’s youth takes shape over the volume’s nearly two hundred pages. Familiar faces and landscapes reappear: stylish men standing with a car on the side of the road, leaning on a fence set against the city in the background, posing in front of crashing waves on the beach. “The intimate format—and snapshot style of the images—offers an absorbing record of a community of friends navigating American culture in the 1980s and ’90s,” says juror Michael Famighetti.

Dead End by Nicola Moscelli 
Penisola Edizioni and Antiga Edizioni, Crocetta del Montello, Italy, Design by Roberto Vito D’Amico 

Intensively researched, Dead End, by Nicola Moscelli, charts the contentious history of the U.S.-Mexico border through the lens of surveillance and internet culture. Utilizing satellite street-view images from each side of the border as the primary photographic material, the volume collects stark, banal, black-and-white images of urban and suburban spaces that evoke the strategies of the New Topographics, but have been updated for the digital age. Archival material, written testimony, government documents, interviews, screenshots from social media, and fragments of poems and song lyrics reveal the diverse ways the border has been theorized. The Swiss-bound volume is meticulously organized, even integrating the idea of the border into its structure, with images from the U.S. and Mexico divided by a central well of texts and technical information. “The hierarchy of information is so striking,” observes juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “The structure is brilliant, in how it organizes and frames everything—even the photographs—as data.”

Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body by RaMell Ross 
MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown 

Artist, filmmaker, and writer RaMell Ross’s Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body presents his body of work alongside essays by him and other contributors. The book reimagines visual narratives of the American South, opening on stills from Ross’s documentary feature Hale County This Morning, This Evening and continuing through photographic and sculptural work. At the book’s core, differentiated by thin, glossy black paper, is documentation of the mixed-media performance Return to Origin, in which Ross embarked on a fifty-nine hour journey inside a shipping container. The work is a tribute to Henry Box Brown, who famously escaped slavery by mailing himself to abolitionists in Philadelphia. “Bound with book screws and resembling a working document, Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body evokes the feel of a textbook, challenging and expanding the definition of what a photograph of the American South is, and can become,” remarks juror Jacqueline Bates, “a continually evolving concept that invites reinterpretation and revision.”

Daily Self-Portraits 1972–1973 by Melissa Shook 
TBW Books, Oakland, California, Design by Paul Schiek 

In December 1972, Melissa Shook (1939–2020) embarked on a project to photograph herself every day for a year, inside her Lower East Side apartment, in various poses and states of dress and undress. The performance let her contemplate, on her own terms, her relationship to memory and her overlapping identities as a woman, a mother, and an artist. Daily Self-Portraits 1972–1973 brings together Shook’s complete series—a revelatory, prescient body of portraiture that eschews the decisive moment for a more prolonged, open-ended gaze that derives its power and pathos through the accumulation of fleeting gestures and attitudes. The softbound book’s minimalist design accords equal significance to each of the 192 black-and-white photographs. “This is a beautifully produced book that’s made in a simple but perfect way,” says juror Anna Planas. “It’s an important contribution to art history, but her images also feel quite contemporary and relevant today.”

Wata Na Life by Ngadi Smart 
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio 

Although you would never know at first glance, Ngadi Smart’s Wata Na Life was conceived from a commission to document how the global water crisis affects communities in Sierra Leone. Smart’s hypersaturated, effervescent photographs play with layering, collage, and other means of postproduction to deny ethnographic views of disenfranchisement that are so often entangled in depictions of Africa. Instead, the images feel vibrant, spiritual, and full of meaning. “It’s a very African story—what innovation looks like at moments of crisis,” notes juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “Oftentimes people talk about resilience, but I think it’s underrecognized how much problem-solving and intelligence is needed to confront these crises. I think this book successfully honors that spirit.” Within the heavy cardstock cover, the photographs are presented on a set of folded sheets stapled to the back case. “The complexity of the photographs and the book object allows for new meanings to be surfaced each time I pick it up,” lauds Mutiti.

Born from the Same Root by Tsai Ting Bang
Self-published, Taipei, Design by Tsai Ting Bang and Shū Hé Zhì

Tsai Ting Bang’s Born from the Same Root forms a moving portrait of the artist’s older brother Hsien and reflects upon their shared family trauma. The boys grew up in separate homes, and as a young adult, Hsien began suffering from mental health issues and cut contact with the family for three years. Tsai uses the book to explore the estrangement, misrecognitions, and mystery at the heart of their bond, interweaving archival family photographs and his own tender portraits of Hsien and his day-to-day life. “The book tells a simple but powerful story and is full of lovely, unguarded moments,” says juror Anna Planas. The intimately sized volume involves a clever bipartite structure, forcing the reader to turn the pages of the book in opposition, as one might open a gatefold. Per Planas, “We loved how the design thoughtfully reflects both the distance and closeness of the brothers’ relationship.”

Twana’s Box: The Photographic Life of Twana Abdullah, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, 1974–1992 by Rawsht Twana
Fraglich Publishing, Bregenz, Austria, Design by Stefano Carini and Lukas Birk 

When Rawsht Twana began sorting through the more than twenty thousand photographs taken by his late father of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, between 1972 and 1992, he knew the project was more than familial. “I have a personal connection to them, but their importance is, of course, political and historical,” he writes, in the introduction to Twana’s Box. This extensive archive is at the core of the book, which offers a rare view into Kurdish communities during a period of immense political turmoil. The book’s dynamic layout and design supports the broad range of subject matter depicted, from scenes of everyday life, to formal portraits, to images of military operations, and more. Two essays open the volume and a series of extended captions add additional context. “Twana’s Box is a portrait of a people in perpetual crisis who nonetheless live with dignity and grace,” says juror Negar Azimi. “It does, indeed, feel like entering an archival box of wonders, a special universe.

Lay Her Down Upon Her Back by Róisín White
Witty Books, Turin, Italy, Landskrona Foto, Sweden, and Breadfield Press, Malmö, Sweden, Design by Tommaso Tanini 

Róisín White’s Lay Her Down Upon Her Back pushes against the historic invisibility of female pain through a haunting, discursive visual essay on the “rest cure”—a once popular prescription for falsely diagnosed neurasthenia and hysteria that consisted of an enforced six-to-eight-week regimen of isolated bed rest, a restricted, high-calorie diet, and electrotherapy. Evoking a manual or a small novel with its pocket-sized format and uncoated paper, the book fuses drawing, collage, found images and ephemera, and White’s black-and-white self-portraits. In these eerie photographs, White’s body contorts into abstracting, uncomfortable poses, establishing a physical vocabulary for the medical mistreatment of women and how it continues to unfold today. “We were drawn to the handmade quality of this book, how the artist used an intimate scope to look at a really pervasive problem,” says juror Anna Planas. “The sequence is very cinematic and integrates a wide range of materials and textures with ease.”

PhotoBook of the Year  

Disruptions by Taysir Batniji
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio 

Opaque, yet frighteningly urgent, Taysir Batniji’s Disruptions compiles pixelated screenshots from WhatsApp video calls to his family in Gaza, taken between April 2015 and June 2017. The fragmentary aesthetic of fragile phone connections offers a metaphor for the breakdown of the psyche in the midst of daily life compromised by conflict. This compact softcover houses about seventy images, which are accompanied by a poignant text from photo-historian Taous Dahmani. Amid warped portraits and pixelated landscapes, the viewer is confronted with bursts of vibrant color signaling failed communication, broken only by solid pages of green that display the date of each call. Disruptions is an oblique but essential reflection on life under occupation. “As Gaza is obliterated in real time, Batniji’s Disruptions is a timely reminder of the precarious nature of human life,” remarks juror Negar Azimi.

Passing By Beijing by Cai Dongdong
Cai Dongdong Studio, Beijing, Design by Wang Lisha 

Between 2002 and 2022, Cai Dongdong documented the streets and outskirts of Beijing after moving to the city from northwest China. Passing By Beijing collects his lush color photographs from that period, beginning with images from his hometown and charting seasonal changes over the years, as the artist acclimated to urban life. Juror Michael Famighetti praises the scope of Cai’s work, referring to “a minimally designed sequence of quiet, everyday gestures.” Cai spends ample time in Beijing’s nature and by its waterfronts, often drifting along its outskirts. Focusing on spaces beyond the city’s ultramodern development, Cai appears to find it endlessly novel. “Beijing is a city built on ideologies,” he writes, in the book’s epilogue. “It is only when I look at these photos that I slowly build up the memories of the past twenty years.”

Plates I–XXXI by Lia Darjes
Chose Commune, Marseille, France, Design by Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi and Perrine Serre 

Plates I–XXXI takes a simple concept to fantastical extremes. To make her photographs, Lia Darjes set out leftover food items on a staged table, while a movement-triggered camera placed nearby automatically captured the birds, mice, squirrels, and even raccoons curious enough to explore the improvised outdoor studio. The resulting still lifes range from painterly depictions of hesitant, inquisitive visitors to sprawling creatures in the midst of a Dionysian feast. Plates I–XXXI is “restrained in scale but teeming with playfulness and visual delight,” says juror Michael Famighetti. Bound in velvet, the book has a lighthearted, fairy-tale sensibility, eschewing any human context for the animals’ tea partying.

We Are Carver by Jessica Ingram 
Self-published, Dallenwil, Switzerland, Design by Michael Schmelling / 40 Worth 

Jessica Ingram’s We Are Carver follows the lives of students at George Washington Carver High School in Columbus, Georgia, located a few miles from Fort Moore, one of the largest military bases in the world. Over six years, Ingram engaged with student cadets in the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, creating an immersive series of photographs that trace the passage from adolescence to adulthood. The book resembles a high school yearbook in trim size and design. Intimate portraits are paired with classroom conversations, interviews, and ephemera, depicting a younger generation’s hopes and fears as the country experiences a moment of political transition. “The depth of her engagement with the students of Carver is commendable, and shows through in the work,” observes juror Jacqueline Bates. “I love that we are able to hear directly from the students, depicting tender, intimate moments that highlight the full spectrum of being on the cusp of adulthood.” 

Les souvenirs des autres (The Memories of Others) by Akihiko Okamura 
Atelier EXB, Paris, Design by François Dezafit 

In 1969, the Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura (1929–1985) moved to Dublin and began to document the then-nascent Troubles, which went on to ravage Northern Ireland for three decades. Les souvenirs des autres brings to light Okamura’s extraordinary photography from this period, distinguished by a richly subdued palette of ochers, browns, and grays, and for its ability to imbue everyday phenomena with surreal portent. “This superbly produced book rediscovers and contextualizes a singular body of work that was until now unrecognized,” says juror Anna Planas. “We were drawn to how its understated, classical design mirrors the quiet intensity of the photographer’s work, which is here allowed to speak for itself.” The high-quality printing affirms Okamura’s tremendous but subtle eye for color, and the ample use of single-image spreads establishes a rhythm attuned, as he was, to the close silences that dwell between violence and mundane life.

Hoja Dorada by César Rodríguez 
KWY, Lima, Peru, Design by Vera Lucía Jiménez 

Bespoke and immersive, César Rodríguez’s Hoja Dorada is a poetic meditation on agricultural labor. Focusing on the itinerant workers who travel annually from regions like Jalisco, Nayarit, Durango, and parts of Zacatecas to harvest tobacco in Nayarit’s coastal fields, Rodríguez’s images capture their journey and poor working conditions. The photographs are observed in a classic documentary style, yet the book denies all traditional means of representation, instead artfully utilizing material, binding, and ink to create a captivating, multimodal experience. “The material choices and printing really allow you to be immersed within these landscapes,” asserts juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “The way patterns of light and shadow are reproduced full bleed on dyed paper and in these incredible, warm tones make the work sing.” Bound with sewn pamphlet stitching in two separate sections that contain pages of both text and image, Hoja Dorada’s simple elegance belies the complexity of its design and storytelling.

A Woman I Once Knew by Rosalind Fox Solomon 
MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown 

With A Woman I Once Knew, Rosalind Fox Solomon announces herself as a self-portraitist of astonishing introspective power. “There’s a lot of generosity in this work,” says juror Anna Planas. “Her portraits and the large-scale format of the book are very daring and can often feel confrontational, but there’s also an acute vulnerability. It’s a strong statement about the female body.” Gathering work made since the 1970s, the book unravels a dialogue between Fox Solomon’s mostly black-and-white self-portraits and her own diaristic writing. “There was a real joy in looking at these pictures, which have a remarkable emotional range,” Planas says. Throughout A Woman I Once Knew, Fox Solomon’s rigorous self-exposures face heavy themes of transformation, aging, and mortality with a sense of levity and surprise, as evidenced by the book’s tipped-on cover, which features the artist posing nude next to a hotel television tuned into the Home Shopping Network.

Look at the U.S.A.: A Diary of War and Home by Peter van Agtmael 
Thames & Hudson, London, Design by Bonnie Briant Design 

Through an enthralling combination of reportage and memoir, Peter van Agtmael’s Look at the U.S.A. paints a vivid picture of American ideology, culture, and foreign policy in the aftermath of 9/11. In the words of juror Negar Azimi, “the book intensely describes the ugly legacies of American wars in the Middle East—the wounds they leave, both physical and psychic.” Van Agtmael began documenting the war in Iraq in 2006, and over nearly two decades amassed a sprawling archive of his own photographs, diaristic writing, interviews, news clippings, and images from mass media. These disparate materials compose a polyphonic narrative that unflinchingly confronts our estrangement and morbid fascination with war. “This book triggered me in more ways than one,” says Azimi. “Van Agtmael’s personal voice, which appears throughout the book, is compelling, taking us back to a time and place that continues to mark our present.”

The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves by Awoiska van der Molen 
Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen 

Awoiska van der Molen’s The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves is a tour de force in understated elegance. The photographs observe domestic environments—entryways, walls, windows, curtains—in a rich grayscale, examining the patina of the everyday and the traces of human presence. Van der Molen’s meditations on surface are printed in rich tritones on uncoated paper, with strong but subtle attention to texture and light. “The printing is so elegant,” lauds juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “The range of blacks, grays, and highlights in the printing allows these everyday spaces to be transformed into something more abstract and ethereal.” The thick, cardstock-like paper of the accordion-fold book contrasts sharply with a smaller set of thin, delicate staple-bound sheets inside, mirroring the interplay between the solid structures and diaphanous screens depicted in the photographs.

The Last Safe Abortion by Carmen Winant 
SPBH Editions, London, Design by Brian Paul Lamotte 

The Last Safe Abortion, by Carmen Winant, reveals everyday practices of abortion care in the United States, drawing on the near-fifty-year period in which abortion was legal, before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. “This is such an urgent subject matter in the United States, in an election year, where women’s rights are in the ballot box,” affirms juror Jacqueline Bates, “and it’s not one that we are typically able to see from the inside in such an honest way.” The artist’s photographs are paired with archival images from abortion clinics across the Midwest and are arranged in two-by-two grids on brightly colored, construction-like paper. The horizontal format and spiral binding recall a handmade album, emphasizing the quotidian nature of many of the archival sources. Free from captions, images of the past and present knit hundreds of stories into an expansive, enduring testament to the tenderness and necessity of everyday healthcare work.

Photography Catalog of the Year 

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering
Katia Reich 
Spector Books, Leipzig, Germany, Design by Helmut Völter 

Akinbode Akinbiyi’s Being, Seeing, Wandering compiles an expansive collection of images from the photographer’s global practice, featuring photographs made in Bamako, Berlin, Brasília, Durban, and Lagos. Throughout his multiyear peregrinations in these cities, Akinbiyi investigates the various sociopolitical impacts of colonialism in urban spaces. The sequence of photographs follows the winding rhythms of a walker moving through a city. The black-and-white, square-format photographs are afforded ample border, invoking the respectful feel of a classic monograph, while essays that establish Akinbiyi’s work within the contexts and canons of local photographic histories are interspersed throughout. “The elegant, understated design puts Akinbiyi’s photography at the forefront,” remarks juror Jacqueline Bates. “This catalog succeeds in highlighting his meditative work centered around his experience living around the world, from the beach scenes in Lagos to the streets of Berlin.”

Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present
Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich 
10×10 Photobooks, New York, Design by  Huber / Sterzinger and Miloš Gavrić 

Chronicling the history of protest in print, Flashpoint! is an epic tribute to global resistance movements. This hefty softcover volumeorganizes an extensive range of printed ephemera from the 1950s until now—zines, photobooks, posters, pamphlets, and more—into thematic chapters that span topics like the AIDS crisis, anti-war activism, environmentalism, and Black Lives Matter. Each piece of printed matter is neatly registered with an accompanying descriptive text, while longer contextual essays buttress each chapter to establish critical and historical contexts. Clever design and typography, including a high-contrast cover image printed on red paper, all-caps title treatments that recall newspaper headlines, and essays in a Courier-esque, slab-serif font, “elegantly mirror the spirit of the materials it presents,” notes juror Negar Azimi.

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm—Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection
Grace Wales Bonner  
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Design by Peter Miles 

A rare glimpse into the mind of one of the world’s most influential designers, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm expands on Wales Bonner’s Artist’s Choice exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, presenting a selection of works from the museum’s collection in a volume punctuated with seminal texts by Black writers. The book alternates between glossy white paper and a delicately thin, creamy uncoated stock. Though it includes nearly eighty artworks, from Lee Friedlander to Pope.L, the book’s images flow together easily due to its restrained design and ample margins. “It has the feel of a special artist’s project,” says juror Michael Famighetti, “offering a precisely calibrated sequence of poetry and photography that beautifully complements the exhibition.” With a refreshingly unique take on an exhibition catalog, Wales Bonner approaches Dream in the Rhythm with the same care she applies her designs.

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain
Joy Gregory, editor, and Taous Dahmani, associate editor 
Autograph and MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown 

Shining Lights, edited by artist Joy Gregory and Taous Dahmani, is a restorative anthology that charts Black women’s essential but often overlooked contributions to Britain’s photography scene in the late twentieth century. Extensively researched and vividly illustrated, the book showcases a tremendous range of visual materials, including photographs from over fifty artists, archival images, documents, and more. This constellation of visual resources is carefully organized by theme—self-portraiture, family, and community activism—and includes scholarly essays, personal reflection, a roundtable discussion, and a detailed timeline. “I love the use of the materials; there’s a friendliness to the cardstock cover, and beautiful neon spine that carries through in how certain elements get highlighted within the running text,” remarks juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “For a project so comprehensive, it feels very generous and inviting. I’m so glad that this project exists.”

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Lines and Bodies
Diane Dufour and Mei Asakura 
Atelier EXB and LE BAL, Paris, Design by Coline Aguettaz 

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Lines and Bodies brings together the formative work of Japanese American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012), whose sophisticated fusion of New Bauhaus aesthetics and Japanese formalism made him a key figure in the postwar art world. Coinciding with a survey exhibition at LE BAL, in Paris, Lines and Bodies explores the titular motifs across the photographer’s early work, from the Mondrianesque geometries of Kyoto’s seventeenth-century Katsura Imperial Villa to the naked legs of Lake Michigan beachgoers. Richly printed, the volume honors the photographer’s command of contrasts—light and shadow, progress and tradition, presence and absence. Four foldouts, each devoted to separate series, heighten the immersive quality of the book, which is housed in an elegant slipcase. “The catalog shares the purpose of the exhibition but brings you into Ishimoto’s journey in a very different way,” says juror Anna Planas. “The book is its own experience, and the sequencing creates a real feeling of discovery.”

The 2024 PhotoBook Award winners will be announced during Paris Photo on Friday, November 8, at 3:00 p.m. (CET).

This year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received 940 books from fifty-nine countries around the world, including standout entries from Argentina, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. On September 18–20, the 2024 shortlist jury met in New York for three concentrated days of review and deliberation by an international team: Negar Azimi, editor in chief, Bidoun; Jacqueline Bates, photography director, Opinion, New York Times; Michael Famighetti, editor in chief, Aperture; Nontsikelelo Mutiti, director of graduate studies in graphic design, Yale School of Art; and Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo.

The shortlist represents more than just the most highly produced, classically beautiful books—it is also an expression of the possibilities of bookmaking across a broad spectrum of resources, intentions, and storytelling techniques. As jury member Michael Famighetti stated, “It was exciting to see such a range of ideas, topics, processes, and forms explored through the photobook. I’m grateful to the jury for dedicating so much time and care to reviewing the submissions, and to our community of dedicated bookmakers, photographers, and scholars for producing and submitting such a powerful selection of work.”

“Serving on the jury offered an intensive and rewarding view into the past year’s publications,” juror Jacqueline Bates observed. “Reviewing books from fifty-nine countries was an extraordinary task. Even among shared themes, each project took a different approach. Of the 940 entries, every single book was unique.”

Anna Planas, artistic director of Paris Photo, and Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo, commented: “The presentation of the shortlisted books at Paris Photo is one of the highlights of the event. The selections chosen for the PhotoBook Awards share an international vision of the production of photography books, and with the pulse of contemporary creativity, they embody the vitality of publishing today.”

A final jury will meet at Paris Photo this November to select the winners for all three prizes, which will be revealed on Friday, November 8. From there, the shortlisted books will be exhibited in Paris, followed by an international tour, including New York at Printed Matter, in January 2025, among other venues to be announced.

Below, see the thirty-five selected titles for the 2024 PhotoBook Awards shortlist.

First PhotoBook

Hady Barry, i am (not) your mother, Self-published, Penumbra Foundation, New York, Design by Hady Barry

Ciro Battiloro, Silence Is a Gift, Chose Commune, Marseille, France, Design by Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi and Perrine Serre

Angeniet Berkers, Lebensborn: Birth Politics in the Third Reich, The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Rob van Hoesel

Claire Cocano, Rue Désiré Chevalier, Self-published, Paris, Design by Claire Cocano

Barbara Debeuckelaere, ’Om (Mother), The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Carel Fransen

Simone Engelen, 27 Drafts, Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen

Janick Entremont, If Time Does Not End, Self-published, Berlin, Design by Janick Entremont

Ismail Ferdous, Sea Beach, Imageless, Shanghai, Design by RELATED DEPARTMENT

Toma Gerzha, Control Refresh, The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Rob van Hoesel

Virginia Hanusik, Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana, Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, New York, Design by New Information, Dave Yun, and Inyeong Cho

Abdulhamid Kircher, Rotting from Within, Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio

Hassan Kurbanbaev, One Head and Thousand Years, Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium, Design by Jurgen Maelfeyt

Srinivas Kuruganti, Pictures in My Hand of a Boy I Still Resemble, Self-published / Marigold Books, Delhi, India, Design by Srinivas Kuruganti

Nicola Moscelli, Dead End, Penisola Edizioni and Antiga Edizioni, Crocetta del Montello, Italy, Design by Roberto Vito D’Amico

RaMell Ross, Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body, MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown

Melissa Shook, Daily Self-Portraits 1972–1973, TBW Books, Oakland, California, Design by Paul Schiek

Ngadi Smart, Wata Na Life, Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio

Tsai Ting Bang, Born from the Same Root, Self-published, Taipei, Design by Tsai Ting Bang and Shū Hé Zhì

Rawsht Twana, Twana’s Box: The Photographic Life of Twana Abdullah, Kurdistan Region of Iraq, 1974–1992, Fraglich Publishing, Bregenz, Austria, Design by Stefano Carini and Lukas Birk

Róisín White, Lay Her Down Upon Her Back, Witty Books, Turin, Italy, Landskrona Foto, Sweden, and Breadfield Press, Malmö, Sweden, Design by Tommaso Tanini

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PhotoBook of the Year

Taysir Batniji, Disruptions, Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / London, Design by Loose Joints Studio

Cai Dongdong, Passing By Beijing, Cai Dongdong Studio, Beijing, Design by Wang Lisha

Lia Darjes, Plates I–XXXI, Chose Commune, Marseille, France, Design by Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi and Perrine Serre

Jessica Ingram, We Are Carver, Self-published, Dallenwil, Switzerland, Design by Michael Schmelling / 40 Worth

Akihiko Okamura, Les souvenirs des autres (The Memories of Others), Atelier EXB, Paris, Design by François Dezafit

César Rodríguez, Hoja Dorada, KWY, Lima, Peru, Design by Vera Lucía Jiménez

Rosalind Fox Solomon, A Woman I Once Knew, MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown

Peter van Agtmael, Look at the U.S.A.: A Diary of War and Home, Thames & Hudson, London, Design by Bonnie Briant Design

Awoiska van der Molen, The Humanness of Our Lonely Selves, Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen

Carmen Winant, The Last Safe Abortion, SPBH Editions, London, Design by Brian Paul Lamotte

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Photography Catalog of the Year

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering, Katia Reich, Spector Books, Leipzig, Germany, Design by Helmut Völter

Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present, Russet Lederman and Olga Yatskevich, 10×10 Photobooks, New York, Design by Huber / Sterzinger and Miloš Gavrić

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm—Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, Grace Wales Bonner, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Design by Peter Miles

Shining Lights: Black Women Photographers in 1980s–90s Britain, Joy Gregory, editor, and Taous Dahmani, associate editor, Autograph and MACK, London, Design by Morgan Crowcroft-Brown

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Lines and Bodies, Diane Dufour and Mei Asakura, Atelier EXB and LE BAL, Paris, Design by Coline Aguettaz

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The 2024 PhotoBook Award winners will be announced during Paris Photo on Friday, November 8, at 3:00 p.m. (CET).

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A Look Inside the Titles Shortlisted for the 2023 PhotoBook Awards

Berghmans observed that the shared goal of the final jury was to “select photobooks that are relevant today—choosing some books that celebrate the pleasure of looking, and others that offer us deeper insights into the lesser-known histories, or to the deeply personal journeys of an individual photographer.”

An exhibition of the thirty-five books shortlisted for the 2023 PhotoBook Awards is currently on view at Paris Photo through November 12 and will travel to Printed Matter in New York City, from January through February 2024, and then to international venues, including presentations at the Helsinki Photo Festival and Photo Australia Melbourne, among others.

Below, read about this year’s winning titles.

Photography Catalog of the Year

The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project
Diwas Raja Kc and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Nepal Picture Library / photo.circle, Kathmandu, Nepal

The Public Life of Women is an inspirational collection of images, documents, and the profiles of key contributors to feminism and champions of women’s rights in Nepal. Organized by photo.circle, a platform for photography and the force behind Photo Kathmandu, the more than five hundred images included in this volume were drawn from the Nepal Picture Library, a visual archive created with the goal of preserving and exploring the country’s social, cultural, and photographic history. The Public Life of Women was published on the heels of an exhibition of the work that has traveled to New Delhi, Singapore, and, most recently, the 2023 Istanbul Biennial. Shortlist juror Lesley A. Martin calls the book “a compelling, eye-opening document delivered in a compact but satisfying and impactful form. It’s a testament to the power of a carefully cultivated archive activated via the book form.” In words and images, The Public Life of Women is a moving roll call of lives and names—a fierce and consequential preservation of the inspiring stories and contributions of Nepali women who made a difference to their mothers, daughters, sisters, and fellow citizens. 

A mass meeting of former kamlaris (women bound laborers), Kanchanpur, Nepal, 2010, from The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project, 2023

Members of Women’s Security Pressure Group take a rally, from The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project, 2023

First PhotoBook Award

Tender by Carla Williams
TBW Books, Oakland, California

“This reads and feels like a beautiful and intimate journey realized in book form, evocative of an artist in tender commune with her younger self, by someone who has committed much of their artistic practice to advocating for Black women’s visibility and representational politics,” observes juror Renée Mussai. Tender by Carla Williams reveals a series of images, including private self-portraits of an eighteen-year-old Williams taken during her time studying photography at Princeton University in the mid-1980s and ’90s. The design is modest yet sophisticated, offering an intimate glimpse into a pivotal moment of the artist’s life. The book remains coherent and engrossing in all aspects of the work, from the artist’s motive to its intellectual rhythm communicated through an essay by artist and scholar Mireille Miller-Young that serves as a mediation around Black feminist expression. “Williams conjures a visual alchemy and shifting sensuality from one page to the next—from image to image, consistently imbued with a profound sense of being and becoming, of stillness, fierceness, and desire. This publication is a very generous and special gift,” says Mussai. Tender is gentle yet immensely seductive as a platform for the artist’s coming-of-age, conveying maturity, sensuality, and possibility.

Carla Williams, Untitled, 1985–86, from Tender, 2023

Carla Williams, Untitled (Crying #2), 1984–85, from Tender, 2023

PhotoBook of the Year

The Drawer by Vince Aletti
SPBH Editions, London

The Drawer illustrates the vivid accumulation of photographic ephemera gathered over the years by esteemed photography critic and curator Vince Aletti. “This phenomenal publication offers special insight into one person’s unique commitment to collecting, curating and archiving imagery in public circulation over several decades. Deeply engaging, it represents a bold testament to complex notions of desire and visual pleasure,” states juror Renée Mussai. The seventy-five multi-layered compositions brought together in this book include gallery announcements, magazine tear sheets, newspaper clippings, and other printed materials dating from the 1970s to the present. The pages’ layout references the chance layering and juxtapositions of Aletti’s flat files. Each oversized spread is printed on lush, uncoated paper, unencumbered by text, entwining the worlds of art and fashion with homoerotic candor that feels provocative and daring. The images utilize the entire printed page, as full bleeds from beginning to end. “A visual feast, it is an apt reflection of Aletti’s long-standing career and commitment to art history, inviting readers to an astute mode of looking and seeing which has long nourished his practice as a critic,” says Mussai. The Drawer is an ode to the collector, a personal yet recognizable retelling through the printed page and the lure of the photographic image. 

Vince Aletti, from The Drawer, 2022

Juror’s Special Mention

Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures
Sandrine Colard, Lannoo Publishers, Tielt, Belgium, and Fotomuseum FOMU, Antwerp, Belgium

Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures takes on the crucial task of reclaiming the colonial visual narratives of the Congo, providing an extensive, multi-layered examination of this complicated photographic history. Published as a companion to an exhibition at FOMU Antwerp, the volume functions as a dialogue between texts by contemporary Congolese writers Sinzo Aanza, In Koli Jean Bofane, and Annie Lulu, and the historical archival photographs, breathing new meaning into images created and received through a biased, colonizing lens. The catalog design takes its inspiration from the minimalism and primary colors utilized by W. E. B. Du Bois in the sociological graphs created for his 1900 Paris World’s Fair “Exposition des Nègres d’Amérique.” This understated approach allows for an elegant and clear visual structure in support of the consequential and pressing historical analysis contained within. Anna Planas called out for special attention the book’s work to “bring together invaluable research conducted across three continents.” In addition to the generous spirit of scholarly collaboration as a means of redress and reconciliation, Planas notes that this is a thorny but important subject, recalling that the jury appreciated its concern with “the role of visual culture and its influence on history, as well as the importance of addressing the colonial roots of photography.”

An exhibition of 2023 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist will be on view at Paris Photo November 9–12, and will travel to Printed Matter in New York City in January 2024.

Note: Given jurors’ extensive engagement in the scholarship and production of photography books, the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards maintain a strict policy of recusal, in which the juror in question must state their conflict in advance and remove themselves from the discussion of books in which they were directly involved; any such book must be unanimously voted in by the remaining jurors.

This year, the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards shortlist jury reviewed over nine hundred books from sixty-one countries. The international team consisted of: Deirdre Donohue, assistant director of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs, the New York Public Library; Alex Lin, creative director and owner, Studio Lin; Lesley A. Martin, editor at large, Aperture; Renée Mussai, artistic director, the Walther Collection; and Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo.

Anna Planas, artistic director of Paris Photo, and Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo, jointly noted: “The PhotoBook Awards pursue, this year, their long-term commitment and support for photography books. We are very excited to celebrate this year’s exhibition with a selection that offers a source for discovery and enchantment to all photobook lovers. The PhotoBook Awards shortlist will feature thirty-five of the most relevant publications from the past year, giving an international overview of the diversity and richness of today’s production.”

On Thursday, November 9, a final jury met in Paris to select the winners for all three prizes. The jury included Laia Abril, artist; Tamara Berghmans, curator, Fotomuseum Antwerpen (FOMU); Alexis Fabry, curator and founder of Toluca Fine Art; Alona Pardo, curator, Barbican; Mark Sealy, director of Autograph and professor of Photography Rights and Representation at University of the Arts London. The announcement of winners in each category took place on Friday, November 10 at Paris Photo. After their exhibition in Paris, the shortlisted and winning titles will also be hosted at Printed Matter, New York in January 2024, and will tour internationally thereafter. 

Below, read more about the winning and shortlisted titles in the 2023 PhotoBook Awards.

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Announcing the Winners of the 2023 PhotoBook Awards

First Photobook

How was your dream? by Thaddé Comar
Mörel Books, London

How was your dream? by Thaddé Comar is a hyper-contemporary take on the Hong Kong protests of 2019. The photographs depict protesters collectively combatting police surveillance: portraits of faces covered by masks, glasses, and hats are juxtaposed against close-ups of drones, cellphone cameras, and the watchful gaze of riot police. The dystopian atmosphere and energy of the protests are perfectly conjured by Comar’s use of motion blur, lens flares, and neon colors richly printed as full-bleeds on high-glossy paper. “The strength of the moment is reflected in the images, the acid colors, and the frenetic design—a perfect capture of a near-futuristic moment,” Planas states. “The shine and electric colors fit the energy one feels in the images, and the portraits have a robotic feeling. It evokes the violence of the moment.” In How was your dream?, Comar persuasively evokes the urgent struggle of the people of Hong Kong fighting for their democratic rights.

Pasaco, 1996 by Luis Corzo
Kult Books, Stockholm

Pasaco, 1996 tells the shocking story of the abduction of Luis Corzo and his father, Juan Corzo Jr., when the photographer was just six years old. Kidnapped at gun-point by a Guatemalan organized crime group named Los Pasaco, Juan Corzo was tortured and the two of them were held for thirty days before being released. Luis Corzo has meticulously gathered together the documentation and evidence from this event, including testimony from the various players, portraits of his family, photographs of locations where the events took place, Polaroids of the two in captivity sent to his mother, letters exchanged at that time, and other materials bearing witness to this event. “The book has been carefully assembled via a very neutral, formal design—an almost clinical container purpose-built to hold this horrific story,” observes juror Lesley A. Martin. “It accomplishes an incredible balancing act, all the more effective for its restraint. A bilingual text by journalist Claudia Méndez Arriaza connects the personal story of the Corzos’ ordeal with the larger threads of violence and corruption across Guatemala—and how one can move toward reconciliation and a more just future for the country and its people.

When Eye Land by Star Feliz
Printed Matter Inc., New York

Beautifully bound in green leatherette silkscreened in gold, When Eye Land brings together a multivalent exploration of self, identity, and memory in the face of a colonial past. Artist and healer Star Feliz channels their research-rich, installation-based practice into the pages of this book, assembling an engaging remix of maps, family photos, historical illustrations, and letters grounded in critical fabulation to tell the often-brutal history of the Dominican Republic and its people, including that of Feliz’s immediate family and their Afro-Taíno ancestral past. The images are reproduced on satisfyingly toothy paper, and accented throughout via the use of a gold Pantone ink. “It’s a gorgeous, absorbing book,” confirms Donohue, “a powerful invocation of the past, full of fascinating juxtapositions, contradictions, and personal, compelling details.” The text by Manuel Arturo Abreu makes note of the need for such stories to commemorate the struggles of the past to ensure the transmission of the lessons learned to future generations.

Humpty Doom by Liss Fenwick
Bad News Books, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand

Photographer Liss Fenwick grew up in rural New Zealand, in a place inspirationally called Humpty Doo. The images contained within this slim paperback volume are a combination of pictures Fenwick took as a teenager, and recent photographs taken partially in response to those images. The photographs build a steady sense of foreboding—depicting burned-out cars and forests, eerily yellow skies, termite mounds, and rotting fruit, intriguingly set off against goofy grade school photos and early self-portraits or snapshots of family. In a recent image that appears early in the sequence, a tree bears the inscription “Larrakia Land” carved into its bark, a nod to the aboriginal inhabitants and traditional owners of the region. “The photographs do the heavy lifting in this book,” notes Martin. “The work is presented simply and classically on their own or in evocative pairs. It’s a modest but extremely effective use of the photobook as a visual short story about growing up, but also a meditation on the precarity of the future.”

El Gobierno Te Odia by Christopher Gregory-Rivera
Self-published, Penumbra Foundation, New York

Over the last nine years, Puerto Rican photographer Christopher Gregory-Rivera has embarked on an unsparingly honest, extensively researched project documenting one of the longest continuous Puerto Rican surveillance programs on its own citizens. “This book, made to resemble a dossier, is culled from the remarkable photographs held by the National Archives of Puerto Rico,” juror Lesley A. Martin notes. The book draws from over forty thousand surveillance images taken between 1940 and 1987. Further amplified by the inclusion of a surveillance manual detailing monitoring techniques, Rivera’s full-scale, photographic reproductions boldly bear witness to the state’s fraught colonialist history. “The choice of the bindin bolts and Risograph printing, with its resemblance to photocopies and newsprint,” notes Martin, “is an apt way to produce a book that draws on such seemingly haphazard but ultimately sinister imagery.” Replete with primary textual and visual evidence, El Gobierno Te Odia illuminates and critiques the violent and systematic suppression of government surveillance during a pivotal time in the Puerto Rican independence movement.

Octopus by Steve Harries
RVB Books, Paris

Octopus beautifully synthesizes Steve Harries’s series of epic, mountainous landscapes and equally dramatic close-ups of minerals. The image sequence is punctuated by An Octopus, a 1924 poem by Marianne Moore, which appears printed on semi-translucent paper bound into the center of the book. The surreal, fragmented words of Moore’s poem reflect and heighten the book’s approach to presenting Harries’s images: as the viewer leafs through its pages and many foldouts, the landscape expands and compresses. Planas notes the careful attention to materiality and form: “Octopus is quite elaborate in the materials used; in the way the binding allows you to unfold and enter the landscape; and in the shifting scale experienced in the juxtaposition of tiny details against immense vistas.” An immersive and beguilingly physical book, Octopus successfully plays with a reader’s sense of macrocosm and microcosm.

Nightairs by Samuel James
Fw:Books, Amsterdam

Over a period of four years, Samuel James has photographed groups of fireflies that gather in the forests of southern Ohio, a nocturnal nexus where the insects commune with each other through a mesmerizing display of light and color before they eventually expire. Through James’s lens, these ephemeral moments are transformed into gorgeous abstractions of light, color, and landscape that feel simultaneously cosmic and earthly. In the words of juror Alex Lin, Nightairs, “achieves the most out of the essential elements it takes to make a book: ink and paper. I can’t imagine a way you could create a larger impact with these basic materials.” Saddle-stitched and printed on a single stock of uncoated paper, with each image bled across the gutter and enclosed with a black border, the spellbinding patterns of light James captures are further elevated by the sophisticated approach to the book’s materiality.

Orange Grove by Clifford Prince King
TIS Books, New York

Orange Grove explores the concept of home and belonging, welcoming the viewer into a warm and intimate series of portraits of a community, focusing especially on depictions of Malcolm Marquez, King’s friend and fellow artist, in the home they made together. While the domestic space is a common photographic theme, King brings to it a gentle and consistent aesthetic, one that is drenched in the golden glow of late afternoon light, and each image is defined by carefully noted gestures of care. The choices of a tactilely inviting, warm-hued toothy paper and a minimalist design that provides ample space for the close consideration of his subjects both underscore King’s commitment to deepening the narratives around Black and queer masculinity. “King’s work is elegantly, simply, and effectively presented in this volume,” Martin comments. “It’s a slow burn in which each tableau adds to the atmosphere of ease and companionship, and deepens a sense of belonging.” The work carefully and conscientiously situates itself within a circle of artistic intimates, with nods to other practices in which embedded codes of queerness are key, sometimes via referenced images carefully placed inside the frame. “The book is full of a certain sense of ‘If you know, you know,’ while also taking care to leave space for the viewer to take part,” Martin notes.

Ghar by Anu Kumar
Perimeter Editions, Melbourne

Anu Kumar’s Ghar is a tender and poetic meditation on family, heritage, and immigration. Kumar, who was born in Kavi Nagar, India, but raised in Melbourne, Australia, was struck by her unfamiliarity with her birthplace when she returned at age twenty-one. Ghar encapsulates Kumar’s process of reflection and familiarization with her roots, tracing her five-year reengagement with her family home in Kavi Nagar and the surrounding neighborhood. Gentle portraits of her aunts and uncles intermix with quiet scenes from daily life, as well as scanned photographs from her family archive, providing a contemplative look into daily ritual, familial relationships, and personal history. “This book encapsulates so many sentiments of the immigrant experience with tremendous poetry,” says juror Alex Lin. “Even the smallest gestures, like the way the English text overlaps the Hindi on the cover, beautifully reference the multiplicity of the sense of ‘home.’”

Statues Also Die by Jan Mammey and Falk Messerschmidt
Kodoji Press, Baden, Switzerland

Jan Mammey and Falk Messerschmidt’s Statues Also Die provides a detailed record of the artists’ exploration of Paris in search of the monuments to French colonialism that still stand. The book, like the Alain Resnais and Chris Marker film from which it took its title, is a work of documentation, research, and appraisal of the artifacts and monuments that continue to remind Paris of its colonial legacy. Documenting thirty-one different sites over the course of six months, and accompanied by text the artists gathered throughout their investigation, the captivating, full-bleed images, often of fragments and details of their subjects, immerse the reader in both day and night scenes that prompt questions about the objective truth of recent and distant history. “It is a beautifully realized book,” asserts Deirdre Donohue. “A sophisticated, engaging work, fact filled and a pleasure to hold and to read.”

El Retrato De Tu Ausencia (The Portrait of Your Absence) by Alejandro “Luperca” Morales
Kult Books, Stockholm, and Los Sumergidos, New York/ Mexico

To make the images in El Retrato De Tu Ausencia, Alejandro “Luperca” Morales collected hundreds of photographs from his local newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, each containing graphic images of victims of homicide. Due to a period of increased violence in the city and the everyday nature of these murders, the local Mexican press allows these images to be published and disseminated. In an act of respect towards the victims, and in resistance to the sensationalism of the violence they portray, Morales intervenes, physically removing the corpses with an eraser, leaving uncanny vacancies where the bodies once were. “The way Morales erases parts of the image to reveal the printed text on the newsprint’s verso creates incredibly interesting and beautiful images,” observes juror Alex Lin. “It’s so interesting how that beauty belies the original violence of the photos.” The book, softbound with a lenticular cover, collects these altered images, which are often enlarged and cropped, emphasizing the halftone texture of the original newsprint, and further augmenting the disorienting effect of the images.

Hunting In Time by Ronit Porat
Sternthal Books, Montreal, Quebec

“A remarkable assemblage of pictorial juxtapositions and intriguing, surreal compositions—a fragmentary reconstruction of a particular moment in time,” observes juror Renée Mussai. Hunting In Time by Ronit Porat offers an abstracted retelling of a murder committed by sixteen-year-old Lieschen Neumann in 1930s Berlin. The investigation reveals the story of the victim, Fritz Ulbrich, a local watchmaker who created a pornographic photography studio in the backroom of his shop, including hundreds of images of young women. Porat offers a beautifully dense and unexpected visual capsule utilizing a sophisticated design that incorporates a natural linen cover and pages with rounded edges. There is a hapticity to the book, which includes series of black-and-white photographs of recurring human figures, animal forms, clocks, and other symbolic imagery on uncoated paper. These constellations of images speak to matters of time and memory and are interwoven throughout the book. “I was most intrigued by Porat’s multi-facted use of intricate nonlinear narratives: this is a kind of speculative photographic investigation through a nuanced, considered and conceptual activation of archival imagery,” says Mussai. The book illustrates Porat’s rich artistic practice, collecting and deconstructing the photographic archive and tracing complex human behavioral patterns while evoking the emotional dynamic between a predator and its prey.  

Subida al Cielo by Lúa Ribeira
Dalpine, Madrid

Subida al Cielo assembles five series by Lúa Ribeira, united by a thoughtful, engaged, and often theatrical approach to documenting marginalized communities. The series range in focus: from cognitively disabled women living in a religious institution in Galicia, Spain, where the photographer was born, to people experiencing homelessness in Bristol, UK, where she is currently based. Throughout the material, Ribeira works closely with her subjects to establish dynamic scenes and poses for each of the portraits, weaving together images of each community member alongside images of landscape to lend a heightened sense of metaphor and poetry backed by candor and authenticity. Each of the thoughtfully sequenced series are presented together simply, with ample borders around each image, the better to direct the reader through each encounter with the individuals depicted. The book offers a quiet, meditative walk through Ribeira’s diverse subject matter. “The book offers a captivating journey through the different series, led by a dreamy but clear-eyed artist, and highlighting her strong collaborative ethos as a photographer,” Planas confirms.

Montaña Roja by César Rodríguez
KWY, Lima, Peru

Montaña Roja by César Rodríguez brings us a lyrical portrayal of the embattled farming community of Guerrero, Mexico, his hometown. This modest but absorbing book focuses on the rich cultural traditions of the region while highlighting the role of poppy cultivation that has come to dominate local culture. As Planas states, “It’s a rare, insider’s document of the type of place that usually passes under the radar.” Rodríguez effectively immerses the viewer by presenting a tightly selected series of images in two separate booklets, each printed on a satisfyingly rough paper well-matched to the printing and to the atmospheric evocation of the region. The book brings together these sections with a clever yet elegant binding that allows the reader to interact with the sequences of images, in addition to a third booklet of poetry tipped into the back. The book as a whole is bound by red string, contrasting the black-and-white photographs to powerfully evoke the rich color of poppies. Planas continues, “There is a tension and strength in Rodríguez’s images, successfully evoking the place and the violence that is present there—it really tells the story of tradition and daily life.”

lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound by Keisha Scarville
MACK, London

lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound creates “an evocative cosmology of multiplicity, constituted in and birthed by many interwoven chronicles, visual fragments, and lived experiences that are anchored in a profoundly personal space, yet imbued with collective echoes and poetic reverberations,” according to Renée Mussai. Keisha Scarville has spent much of her life and artistic practice investigating her lineage, navigating notions of identity and belonging between the Caribbean and the United States. Her powerful first artist’s book speaks to questions of time, memory, and tracing of ancestral narratives. The artist’s black-and-white imagery feels contemporary and charged, at times incorporating archival images and film stills. The book utilizes a simple yet alluring design that allows the images to flow from page to page, reflecting the artist’s hybrid practice, rooted in collage and juxtaposition of visual ideas. Lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound offers, as Mussai states, “a hypnotic and sublime essay of diasporic visuality where past, present, and future sentiments dance and collide. 

Nasser Road / Political Posters in Uganda, Kristof Titeca, ed.
The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands

Nasser Road / Political Posters in Uganda investigates the print culture of Nasser Road in Kampala. Often referred to as Uganda’s Silicon Valley, the street is known as a nexus for the print trade, but also fraud: any formal or bureaucratic document can be faked and bought there. Kristof Titeca’s interest in Nasser Road, however, lies in the print culture of the hyperbolic political posters and calendars produced there. The posters often celebrate nefarious figures like Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un, or Osama bin Laden, who are photoshopped onto the bodies of RoboCop or Darth Vader; in others, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky are recast as Ultimate Fighter combatants. Over-the-top, raucous, and strange, they exemplify a brash rejection of Western imperialism conflated with a fevered embrace of authoritarianism and pop-culture gone askew. The majority of this slim volume is reproduced on the same cardstock used in printing the actual posters—glossy on one side and uncoated on the other. An additional section of photographs illustrating the production process by Ugandan photographers Badru Katumba and Zahara Abdul, is printed on uncoated paper. “The material choices add a clever touch to an already fantastic book,” notes juror Alex Lin. “The cardstock used throughout the book structures and presents the content perfectly, creating a uniquely supportive platform for Titeca’s research.”

Mountain of Salt by Bindi Vora
Perimeter Editions, Melbourne

Mountain of Salt is a delightfully cacophonous compilation built from found images and appropriated text produced by the artist and curator Bindi Vora during the Covid pandemic. The series features text-based collage works, which Vora obsessively archived, drawing from the flow of visual and textual fragments around her—a ritual she took on as a coping mechanism during the solitary times of the pandemic. The small but densely packed book places archival, black-and white photographs, overlayed with digitally colored patches in different shapes. The images function in dialogue with language drawn from news articles, press conferences, and social media. Slyly interweaving the familiar political and ideological arcs in the wake of Brexit, the COVID-19 outbreak, and the murder of George Floyd, Mountain of Salt echoes the poignant, and at times humorous, responses to a time of unparalleled uncertainty and fear. “For all the work made about life in the pandemic, this is a deceptively complex piece of art,” commends Deirdre Donohue. “A boldly poetic look at our modern troubles, it is both sobering and heartening.”

Tender by Carla Williams
TBW Books, Oakland, California

“Thisreads andfeels like a beautiful and intimate journey realized in book form, evocative of an artist in tender commune with her younger self, by someone who has committed much of their artistic practice to advocating for Black women’s visibility and representational politics,” observes juror Renée Mussai. Tender by Carla Williams reveals a series of images, including private self-portraits of an eighteen-year-old Williams taken during her time studying photography at Princeton University in the mid-1980s and ’90s. The design is modest yet sophisticated, offering an intimate glimpse into a pivotal moment of the artist’s life. The book remains coherent and engrossing in all aspects of the work, from the artist’s motive to its intellectual rhythm communicated through an essay by artist and scholar Mireille Miller-Young that serves as a mediation around Black feminist expression. “Williams conjures a visual alchemy and shifting sensuality from one page to the next—from image to image, consistently imbued with a profound sense of being and becoming, of stillness, fierceness, and desire. This publication is a very generous and special gift,” says Mussai. Tender is gentle yet immensely seductive as a platform for the artist’s coming-of-age, conveying maturity, sensuality, and possibility.

Painting Photographs by Alice Wong
TBW Books, Oakland, California

Alice Wong’s Painting Photographs takes vintage vernacular photographs as a launch point for what become delightfully colorful and playful abstractions via the artist’s enthusiastic painting technique. Wong’s hyper-saturated palette, attention to composition, and energetic brush strokes revitalize what are otherwise pedestrian found photographs of everyday life. The painted photographs are reproduced at various sizes and placements across the spreads, further activating the overall sense dynamism found throughout the work. “I love the way the design of this book—the bright pink softcover, the color of the image pages, and the idiosyncratic layout of the images on the spreads—emphasize Wong’s images,” says juror Alex Lin. Painting Photographs is a lively celebration of the artist’s vibrant practice, as well as a tribute to the work of Creative Growth Art Center, an organization for artists with developmental, intellectual, and physical disabilities, with whom Wong, a renowned disability activist as well as artist, has worked since 2003. 

1 2 3 2 1 by Yao Yuan
Self-published, Antwerp, Belgium Photographer

Yao Yuan presents a raw, expressive record in 1 2 3 2 1, a 304-page photographic memoir that serves as a dense yet intimate documentation of pregnancy, birth, and motherhood as experienced by their friend Nagakura Nami. The book presents its story via pure visuality, uninterrupted by textual elements, beautifully printed on uncoated paper. “There is an emotional depth and ephemeral quality to Yuan’s images and a consistently powerful visual temperature that run as a leitmotif throughout the book, creating a deep sense of contemplation on life and love, self and other, time and place, and our relationship to the environment,” observes juror Renée Mussai. The fusion of blurred cinematic landscapes, cityscapes, and figurative compositions explores themes of identity while referencing the continued tension between nature and society through an emotive and personal lens. 1 2 3 2 1 is a recollection of life’s changing seasons, from the mundane to explorations of self-discovery through the evolving layers of motherhood.

PhotoBook of the Year

The Drawer by Vince Aletti
SPBH Editions, London

The Drawer illustrates the vivid accumulation of photographic ephemera gathered over the years by esteemed photography critic and curator Vince Aletti. “This phenomenal publication offers special insight into one person’s unique commitment to collecting, curating and archiving imagery in public circulation over several decades. Deeply engaging, it represents a bold testament to complex notions of desire and visual pleasure,” states juror Renée Mussai. The seventy-five multi-layered compositions brought together in this book include gallery announcements, magazine tear sheets, newspaper clippings, and other printed materials dating from the 1970s to the present. The pages’ layout references the chance layering and juxtapositions of Aletti’s flat files. Each oversized spread is printed on lush, uncoated paper, unencumbered by text, entwining the worlds of art and fashion with homoerotic candor that feels provocative and daring. The images utilize the entire printed page, as full bleeds from beginning to end. “A visual feast, it is an apt reflection of Aletti’s long-standing career and commitment to art history, inviting readers to an astute mode of looking and seeing which has long nourished his practice as a critic,” says Mussai. The Drawer is an ode to the collector, a personal yet recognizable retelling through the printed page and the lure of the photographic image. 

Archivo Nómada Vol. 1: 1975–1981 Alberto García-Alix, Frédérique Bangerter, ed.
Editorial Cabeza de Chorlito, Madrid

Alberto García-Alix’s Nomad Archive functions as a chockablock, immersive survey of the first six years of the photographer’s long-standing career. The monograph includes more than two thousand images taken between 1975 and 1981: the historical moment of democratic transition in Spain after the death of dictator Francisco Franco. The plethora of informal, black-and-white images of García-Alix’s friends taken in their apartments, at parties, and on the streets of Madrid beautifully documents youth culture during this time. A crisp, contemporary design makes effective use of contact sheet–style grids, evocative pairings of single images, and horizontal images turned on their side, all bound together with an open spine. Per Anna Planas, “The design is very contemporary; it really suits the archive incredibly well and it is quite pleasant to see the truth of a whole sequence.” On top of the fresh design treatment, previously unseen photographs breathe new life into what we already know of García-Alix’s work. Planas notes, “it is an ambitious, generous gift of a book.”

Dialect by Felipe Romero Beltrán
Loose Joints, Marseille, France

In Dialect, Felipe Romero Beltrán documents the lives of young Moroccan men who have recently migrated to Seville, Spain. Over the course of multiple years, Beltrán collaborated with his subjects as they lived in a state of suspension while awaiting Spanish citizenship. In the process, the photographer learned the young men’s harrowing stories of migrating by boat, many of which are recorded in the book. In Beltrán’s photographs, the men take on dynamic, dance-inflected poses, juxtaposed against intimate images of the tight spaces they live in, beautifully capturing the push and pull of migration and the liminal space in which the subjects exist. A simple, elegant design and stripped-down materiality support the rawness of their stories. “It’s a study of the gestures and physicality of what it means to come to Spain from Morocco,” says Anna Planas. “The jury was intrigued by the way Beltrán has collaborated with these young men to build a reflection about the body, and the choreography and movements of migration This aspect of the exploration is further supported in the textual material and documentation of a related performance included in the back of the book.”

Observatories/Laboratories and Laboratories/Observatories by Lynne Cohen and Marina Gadonneix
Atelier EXB / Centre Pompidou, Paris

Twinned monographs published on the occasion of an exhibition at Centre Pompidou, Lynne Cohen: Observatories and Marina Gadonneix: Laboratories present anintergenerational dialogue between two artists who had begun a correspondence a year before Lynne Cohen’s death. Complimentary in their impressive black-and-white graphic treatments, these dual-volume large-format books allow the viewer a glimpse into this unexpected and exciting exchange. Cohen’s photographs of the interiors of public spaces—classrooms, living rooms, and lobbies—serve as inspiration for Marina Gadonneix, who documents scientific research sites in which natural phenomena are analyzed. The artists’ shared interest in desolate physical spaces illustrates a contrasting drive to investigate and question social space. “This is a powerful, deep assessment of known and unknown works by both artists” remarks juror Deirdre Donohue. “In this elegant set of books, we are witness to the restitution of lost recognition and new connections being made.”

Bilateral by Samuel Gratacap
Poursuite, Arles, France

Bilateral offers a rich visual narrative on the experience of refugees on the Mediterranean rim. “A poignant mediation of exile, voyage, and passage, the book extends an empathetic invitation to the reader to immerse themselves in one of the most urgent and critical conversations of our time,” posits juror Renée Mussai. The title speaks to Gratacap’s deeply rooted research in geopolitical crises, communicated through his staunch refusal of conventional media portrayals of these events. “Gratacap’s at times abstract, poetic imagery does not follow the logic of straightforward reportage; instead, it adopts a more poetic but equally powerful approach to speaking to pivotal questions of exile, motion, and migration,” says Mussai. Gratacap’s presentation of blurry black-and-white photographs spread across the double pages creates a transfixing, conceptual visualization of border crossings and temporary occupation. The consistent palette and elegant, restrained design underscore and support the artist’s lyrical strategy. Presence versus absence is symbolically conveyed through figures, often obscured or faceless, encouraging the reader to consider the portrayal of these intense voyages through broader ideas of displacement, belonging, and identification.

Small Myths by Mikiko Hara
Chose Commune, Marseille, France

Small Myths offers a moving, poetic meditation on the camera as a self-extension—a collection of memories assembled from chance encounters and the rhythms of ordinary life. In collaboration with Marseille-based publisher Chose Commune, artist Mikiko Hara has put together a “beautiful, engaging sequence out of her curious, gentle images,” says Deirdre Donohue. The photographer, who works with a personal, diaristic sensibility, is keenly interested in documenting and preserving small moments. Small Myths includes thoughtfully sequenced, square-format images that show playfully sliced sausages in a frying pan, Hara’s son sprawled out on the floor, culled tulips in a vase in the sink. Interspersed with short journal entries and printed on delicate, uncoated yellow paper, Hara invites the reader to consider a series of pared-down, intimate moments. The cover is given a similarly minimalistic treatment, allowing for a singular image to provide a “pure invitation presented in the form of a mysterious photograph,” according to Donohue. “The book provides an unfettered pleasure thanks to the book’s sensitive and subtle renditions of affection.”

L.A. Vedute by Thomas Locke Hobbs
The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands

Los Angeles, one of the most photographed and filmed cityscapes in contemporary times, is the subject of this chunky and entrancing softcover book. In L.A. Vedute, Thomas Locke Hobbs rigorously focuses on interstitial landscapes found between buildings and homes, photographing with a large-format camera to render his images with maximum crispness and detail. Each spread features a single black-and-white photograph, split neatly down the middle by the book’s gutter, an apt use of the architecture of the book form to highlight the geometry and structure of the images. The use of the Italian word Vedute (views) in the title, rendered via Roman-era inscription-like type on the otherwise minimalist cover, further confirms a classical architectural ethos—think Piranesi’s one-point perspective or Canaletto’s topographic views. In between suites of these individual images, the viewer is treated to close-ups of weeds, mud, and the ever-present abandoned shopping cart, all printed on yellow paper—a bracing jolt of color and chaos. “Despite the formality and preciseness of the layout, the double page spreads, unabashed embrace of the gutter (something many photographers abhor), and interleaving hits of color make this a sharp, contemporary book,” remarks juror Lesley A. Martin. “It points to all the ways in which a well-matched book design and materiality can bolster a strong body of work.”

The Sapper by Bharat Sikka
Fw:Books, Amsterdam

The Sapper depicts a collaboration between photographer Bharat Sikka and his father, a former “sapper” in the Indian Army Corps of Engineers. Each image draws on subtle, sometimes surreal gestures, and the book’s compelling sequence, rich with oblique references to both author and subject, effortlessly represents the nature of their complex relationship. Each image feels both intimate and “hard-won,” as Sikka describes it—an expansive portrait, sketched in fragments. The soft-bound book houses a constructed and deconstructed imagery that form a puzzle meant to be solved. Sikka draws attention to the limits of the photographic medium to highlight the impossibility of deciphering the known and unknown, through portraits of his father coinciding with collage, still lifes, and interventions within the landscape. An accompanying essay by Charlotte Cotton gives a wonderful clarity to the quiet, conceptual, and at times, performative work. “The images are provocative,” Deirdre Donohue states, “infused with a sense of magical realism; this book bears close looking and re-looking.”

Far Away from Home: The Voices, the Body and the Periphery by Hristina Tasheva
Self-Published, Bodegraven, Netherlands

Far Away from Home: The Voice, the Body and the Periphery draws on Hristina Tasheva’s personal experience as an emigrant from Bulgaria to the Netherlands—two nations that both carry potent but contrasting legacies of communism from World War II. Her central line of inquiry lies in a dialectic between the Dutch communist resistance against the Nazis during World War II and the totalitarian Bulgarian communist party that formed after the war in an effort to realize an ideological utopia. Tasheva decided to retrace the footsteps of both groups in order to try to reconcile their contesting relationships with communism and approximate their collective memory. Far Away from Home is the result of Tasheva’s comprehensive investigation. Rich black-and-white images Tasheva took at former Nazi concentration camps, drawings, academic and archival research, and written testimony weave a poetic and extensive narrative across the book’s uncoated paper. “For a book containing so many different types of information, the design is incredibly restrained, considered, and beautiful” notes juror Alex Lin. “Everything is so satisfying. The way the type, photographs, and drawings come together on the uncoated paper is perfect.”

The Oldest Thing by Ruth van Beek
Van Zoetendaal Publishers, Amsterdam

The Oldest Thing presents an engrossing collection of Ruth van Beek’s work that is personal and quietly moving, drawing on three binders of illustrated recipes and household projects that her mother left behind. Van Beek’s mother, who died when the artist was fifteen, was a traditional homemaker, and the images used in The Oldest Thing often bear the earmarks of classic domesticity—cakes, sewing projects, and potted houseplants. Each page contains an image that has been carefully selected and isolated, occasionally collaged together with other images, or painted over. Familiar objects are made into ciphers, becoming obsessive and strange. And yet, in the recitation and repetition of these images, there is also a certain comfort and soothing calm. Seven poems by the writer and artist Basje Boer punctuate the flow of images, giving the viewer opportunity to pause and process the work. “It’s something you want to hold close in your hand—a very satisfying little brick of a book showcasing what Ruth van Beek does best, mining the living image archive that we all inhabit,” concludes Martin.

Photography Catalog of the Year

Casa Susanna: L’histoire du premier réseau transgenre américain, 1959–1968
Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett, Editions Textuel, Paris

Casa Susanna, L’histoire du premier réseau transgenre américain, 1959–1968 provides an evocative, in-depth view of a storied crossdressing community situated in the Catskills, New York during the late 1950s and ’60s. The book expresses a “beautiful sense of transgressive joy, courage, and freedom,” observes juror Renée Mussai. Casa Susanna utilizes a minimalist design accompanied by serif and a monospaced typeface on uncoated paper, incorporating reproductions from the original Transvestia magazine—a pioneering publication contextualizing transgender experiences. The book creates a delightful archival dialogue between the images and modes of their original distribution, in which the viewer is invited to interpret the visual history of a bygone era in relation to both past and present understandings of gender and personal expression. “Think of this book as a crucial document of collective being and becoming, examining critical questions surrounding kinship and acceptance,” says Mussai. The photographs are candid and personal, offering new access to a community that courageously challenged heteronormative ideals in a safe space where they could exist without fear, prosecution, or societal judgment.

Japanese Photography Magazines: 1880s to 1980s
Ryuichi Kaneko, Masako Toda, Ivan Vartanian, Goliga, Tokyo

Japanese Photography Magazines: 1880s to 1980s is an impressive, meticulously researched, five-hundred-page survey anthologizing one hundred years of Japanese visual history through the lens of photography magazines. Packed with over 1,300 illustrations, this catalog contains an incredible collection of photographic essays, as originally published, by an exhaustive range of both well-established and historically overlooked photographers. An additional gift to the reader is the abundance of texts written by artists to accompany their images, presented here for the first time in English-language translation. Each selected story is gorgeously reproduced in its entirety, including the advertisements interspersed between editorial pages. This title serves as a unique and vital prequel to understanding the far-reaching history of Japan’s print culture, while also charting the evolution and definitive characteristics of photography in Japan. “The jury unanimously recognized this book’s considerable contribution, and appreciated the deep commitment to scholarship in an area that is not widely known,” states juror Deirdre Donohue, “We’ve been anticipating this book for a very long time—and it’s well worth the wait.”

Källström-Fäldt
Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Hasselblad Foundation, B-B-B-Books, Gothenburg, Sweden

Källström-Fäldt skillfully blends utilitarianism and elegance to collect Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt’s projects from over a decade of work. The screw-bound, open-spine catalog, assembled in a live performance by the artists as part of a recent exhibition at the Hasselblad Foundation, traces their sustained interest in the visual culture of news media, and the role it serves in informing our perceptions of history and power. Topics like the WikiLeaks scandal, the military-entertainment complex in the United States, and the colonial histories of France, Great Britain, and Canada all fall into the artists’ shared oeuvre, and are explored through a mix of archival images, research documents, and the artists’ own photography. “Everything about the execution of this book, the design, materials, and structure, are perfect and sophisticated solutions for a book assembled live, during an exhibition,” lauds juror Alex Lin. “The understated combination of acetate, cardboard, and paper create a wonderful and meticulous logic to organize the artists’ work.”

Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures
Sandrine Colard, Lannoo Publishers, Tielt, Belgium, and Fotomuseum FOMU, Antwerp, Belgium

Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures takes on the crucial task of reclaiming the colonial visual narratives of the Congo, providing an extensive, multi-layered examination of this complicated photographic history. Published as a companion to an exhibition at FOMU Antwerp, the volume functions as a dialogue between texts by contemporary Congolese writers Sinzo Aanza, In Koli Jean Bofane, and Annie Lulu, and the historical archival photographs, breathing new meaning into images created and received through a biased, colonizing lens. The catalog design takes its inspiration from the minimalism and primary colors utilized by W. E. B. Du Bois in the sociological graphs created for his 1900 Paris World’s Fair “Exposition des Nègres d’Amérique.” This understated approach allows for an elegant and clear visual structure in support of the consequential and pressing historical analysis contained within. Anna Planas called out for special attention the book’s work to “bring together invaluable research conducted across three continents.” In addition to the generous spirit of scholarly collaboration as a means of redress and reconciliation, Planas notes that this is a thorny but important subject, recalling that the jury appreciated its concern with “the role of visual culture and its influence on history, as well as the importance of addressing the colonial roots of photography.”

The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project
Diwas Raja Kc and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Nepal Picture Library / photo.circle, Kathmandu, Nepal

The Public Life of Women is an inspirational collection of images, documents, and the profiles of key contributors to feminism and champions of women’s rights in Nepal. Organized by photo.circle, a platform for photography and the force behind Photo Kathmandu, the more than five hundred images included in this volume were drawn from the Nepal Picture Library, a visual archive created with the goal of preserving and exploring the country’s social, cultural, and photographic history. The Public Life of Women was published on the heels of an exhibition of the work that has traveled to New Delhi, Singapore, and, most recently, the 2023 Istanbul Biennial. Shortlist juror Lesley A. Martin calls the book “a compelling, eye-opening document delivered in a compact but satisfying and impactful form. It’s a testament to the power of a carefully cultivated archive activated via the book form.” In words and images, The Public Life of Women is a moving roll call of lives and names—a fierce and consequential preservation of the inspiring stories and contributions of Nepali women who made a difference to their mothers, daughters, sisters, and fellow citizens. 

An exhibition of 2023 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist will be on view at Paris Photo November 9–12, and will travel to Printed Matter in New York City in January 2024.

This year, Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received 961 books from sixty-one countries, including stand-out entries from Nepal, New Zealand, Denmark, and Japan. On September 20–22, 2023, the shortlist jury met in New York for three concentrated days of review and deliberation by an international team: Deirdre Donohue, assistant director of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs, the New York Public Library; Alex Lin, creative director and owner, Studio Lin; Lesley A. Martin, editor at large, Aperture; Renée Mussai, artistic director, the Walther Collection; and Anna Planas, artistic director, Paris Photo.

Anna Planas, artistic director of Paris Photo, and Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo, jointly noted: “The PhotoBook Awards pursue, this year, their long-term commitment and support for photography books. We are very excited to celebrate this year’s exhibition with a selection that offers a source for discovery and enchantment to all photobook lovers. The PhotoBook Awards shortlist will feature thirty-five of the most relevant publications from the past year, giving an international overview of the diversity and richness of today’s production.”

Shortlist jury member Alex Lin added: “As a book designer, I truly appreciate how rare it is for a competition to so carefully judge both a book’s form and content. Having worked on Sasha Phyars-Burgess’s Untitled, the 2021 recipient of the First PhotoBook Prize, I was able to witness firsthand the impact and significance that this recognition gave to both a small publisher and to the photographer. I personally experienced the joy and satisfaction that the Prize can bring to publishers who work with limited budgets but with pure passion.”

A final jury will gather at Paris Photo this November to select winners for all three prizes, which will be revealed on Friday, November 10, 2023. From there, shortlisted and winning titles will be exhibited in Paris, and will tour internationally thereafter.

Below, see the thirty-five selected titles for the 2023 PhotoBook Awards shortlist.

First PhotoBook

Thaddé Comar, How was your dream?, Mörel Books, London, Design by Sylvan Lanz

Luis Corzo, Pasaco, 1996, Kult Books, Stockholm, Design by Claudia Rubin

Star Feliz, When Eye Land, Printed Matter Inc., New York, Design by Star Feliz with The Uses of Literacy

Liss Fenwick, Humpty Doom, Bad News Books, Wellington, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Design by Stuart Geddes

Christopher Gregory-Rivera, El Gobierno Te Odia, Self-published, Penumbra Foundation, New York, Design by Alejandro Torres Viera

Steve Harries, Octopus, RVB Books, Paris, Design by Studio Mathias Clottu

Samuel James, Nightairs, Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen

Clifford Prince King, Orange Grove, TIS Books, New York, Design by Carl Wooley

Anu Kumar, Ghar, Perimeter Editions, Melbourne, Design by Narelle Brewer

Jan Mammey and Falk Messerschmidt, Statues Also Die, Kodoji Press, Baden, Switzerland, Design by Helmut Völter

Alejandro “Luperca” Morales, El Retrato De Tu Ausencia (The Portrait of Your Absence), Kult Books, Stockholm, and Los Sumergidos, New York/ Mexico, Design by Fernando Gallegos

Ronit Porat, Hunting In Time, Sternthal Books, Montreal, Quebec, Design by Inedition, Eva van der Schans

Lúa Ribeira, Subida al Cielo, Dalpine, Madrid, Design by Tipode Office

César Rodríguez, Montaña Roja, KWY, Lima, Peru, Design by Vera Lucía Jiménez

Keisha Scarville, lick of tongue, rub of finger, on soft wound, MACK, London, Design by Keisha Scarville and Morgan Crowcroft-Brown

Kristof Titeca, ed., Nasser Road / Political Posters in Uganda, The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Rob van Hoesel

Bindi Vora, Mountain of Salt, Perimeter Editions, Melbourne, Design by Narelle Brewer

Carla Williams, Tender, TBW Books, Oakland, California, Design by Paul Schiek

Alice Wong, Painting Photographs, TBW Books, Oakland, California, Design by Paul Schiek

Yao Yuan, 1 2 3 2 1, Self-published, Antwerp, Belgium, Design by Yao Yuan

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PhotoBook of the Year

Vince Aletti, The Drawer, SPBH Editions, London, Design by Bruce Usher

Frédérique Bangerter, ed., Archivo Nómada Vol. 1: 1975–1981 Alberto García-Alix, Editorial Cabeza de Chorlito, Madrid, Design by Ricardo Báez

Felipe Romero Beltrán, Dialect, Loose Joints, Marseille, France, Design by Loose Joints Studio

Lynne Cohen and Marina Gadonneix, Observatories/Laboratories and Observatories/Laboratories, Atelier EXB / Centre Pompidou, Paris, Design by Jérôme Saint-Loubert Bié

Samuel Gratacap, Bilateral, Poursuite, Arles, France, Design by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine

Mikiko Hara, Small Myths, Chose Commune, Marseille, France, Design by Chose Commune and Bureau Kayser

Thomas Locke Hobbs, L.A. Vedute, The Eriskay Connection, Breda, Netherlands, Design by Rob van Hoesel

Bharat Sikka, The Sapper, Fw:Books, Amsterdam, Design by Hans Gremmen

Hristina Tasheva, Far Away from Home: The Voices, the Body and the Periphery, Self-published, Bodegraven, Netherlands, Design by Collective Works

Ruth van Beek, The Oldest Thing, Van Zoetendaal Publishers, Amsterdam, Design by Willem van Zoetendaal

Previous Next

Photography Catalog of the Year

Casa Susanna: L’histoire du premier réseau transgenre américain, 1959–1968, Isabelle Bonnet and Sophie Hackett, Editions Textuel, Paris, Design by Agnès Dahan Studio

Japanese Photography Magazines: 1880s to 1980s, Ryuichi Kaneko, Masako Toda, Ivan Vartanian, Goliga, Tokyo, Design by Hideki Inaba

Källström-Fäldt, Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Hasselblad Foundation, B-B-B-Books, Gothenburg, Sweden, Design by Axel von Friesen

Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures, Sandrine Colard, Lannoo Publishers, Tielt, Belgium, and Fotomuseum FOMU, Antwerp, Belgium, Design by La Villa Hermosa

The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project, Diwas Raja Kc and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, Nepal Picture Library / photo.circle, Kathmandu, Nepal, Design by Valentina Abenavoli

Previous Next

The 2023 PhotoBook Award winners will be announced during Paris Photo on Friday, November 10, 2023 at 3:00 p.m. CET.

All shortlisted and winning titles will be profiled in a printed catalogue, to be released and distributed for free during Paris Photo, along with the Winter 2022 issue of Aperture magazine. As well, an exhibition of the thirty-five books shortlisted for the 2022 PhotoBook Awards is currently on view at Paris Photo and will travel to Printed Matter in New York City this January 2023.

Below, read about this year’s winning titles.

Photography Catalogue of the Year

Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970
Makeda Best
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts

The reconsideration of photographic landscape traditions has been a major area of scholarship in the last few years. In Devour the Land, Harvard Art Museums curator Makeda Best continues this vital effort by bringing together sixty contemporary artists who explore the intersection of environmental degradation, environmental activism, and the military-industrial complex as a cornerstone of their work. In-depth analyses by Best and a host of other essayists introduce each of the six thematic chapters, offering context for the following suites of work, each by a wide-ranging, intergenerational set of artists. The book also includes insightful interviews with key photographers that appear on short-trimmed and multicolor pages, further helping to guide the reader through each section. “Devour the Land is designed like a manual: a spiral-bound paperback that comes off initially as a somewhat provisional form,” observes juror Lesley Martin, “but that feeling is quickly allayed by the depth and criticality of the content—it’s a brilliant, loose form that gives the reader easy access to the complex and compelling layers of information within.”

First PhotoBook

Sabiha Çimen
HAFIZ
Red Hook Editions, New York

Sabiha Çimen’s HAFIZ (named for a term of respect for a Muslim who knows the Koran by heart) offers a rare glimpse into the world of Turkish schools for girls that focus on the study of the Koran. This playfully inviting book is beautifully bound in a unique pastel-pink case inscribed with a decorative motif that features tiny, lyrical illustrations of young girls in hijabs. The design, which is meant to echo that of a Koran, is a nod to the content at hand. Thoughtful touches like the exposed-spine binding and marbleized endpapers made by Turkish artists lend this book an almost magical quality and complement the moving array of square-format photographs inside. The images are quiet yet graphically arresting, including keenly observed details of birthday parties, girls at play, and dreamy color-saturated portraits of the students. Miwa Susuda notes that the overall impact of the book, which includes the photographer’s personal narrative of her experiences of attending a Koran school, is to “make this rarely depicted community feel very contemporary.” As she observes, “Çimen documents this world with fresh eyes and challenges our expectations about this community.”

PhotoBook of the Year

Mohamed Bourouissa
Périphérique
Loose Joints, Marseille, France

Périphérique presents the entirety of Mohamed Bourouissa’s long-term series of the same name, in which he staged photographs set in the Parisian suburbs that have increasingly become home to large immigrant communities. The book uses multiple paper stocks to denote different aspects of Bourouissa’s creative process: numerous preparatory images at the beginning and end are printed on lighter stock, while heftier gatefolds cleverly expand the narrative of more complex images in the middle. These design choices expertly steer the reader to look more carefully at the intercepting gazes and carefully considered body language of his subjects. Juror Miwa Susuda notes the effective seriality that results from how the images have been arranged: “As a book, this work becomes one unified chapter—a coherent story from beginning to end. Bourouissa is a great storyteller, using staged photography to question the larger issues around the media representation of immigrants.” Périphérique leaves readers questioning the potential fallacies of a photograph and the complexity of how the image can shape and influence perceptions.

Jurors’ Special Mention

Tokuko Ushioda
My Husband
torch press, Tokyo

For many Western readers, this two-volume set will be an overdue introduction to this important Japanese artist’s work. The two books, bound together lightly by a Japanese-style bellyband, are simply but delicately designed, and beautifully reproduced in lush duotone. One of the volumes is encased in a powder-pink cloth and features Ushioda’s black-and-white photographs of her husband, the photographer Shinzo Shimao; their son; and the interior of their densely packed apartment. The second softcover book includes the same subjects, with occasional forays outside, and contains work made with a 35mm camera. The artist’s gaze is both tender and unsparing, coolly inventorying the domestic space. Towels hang over lamps to dry, and stacks of newspapers pile behind an open umbrella; tea kettles and tiny socks fill in as critical details that richly describe this shared space and the lives within. The work is introduced and contextualized by two thoroughly engaging essays, one by historian Yuri Mitsuda, and the other by author and artist Yurie Nagashima. “It’s such an enticing book,” notes Martin, “an invaluable and compelling contribution to a greater understanding of Ushioda’s work.”

An exhibition of the 2022 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist will be on view at Paris Photo through November 13, and then on view at Printed Matter, New York, in January 2023.