Announcing the 2020 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist
Photograph by Daniel Salemi
The Paris PhotoโAperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards welcome a new partner in DELPIRE & CO, who has joined forces with Paris Photo and Aperture to ensure the continuity of the awards in this most unusual of years. While the international photography community will not be able to gather in celebration at the Grand Palais this year, Paris Photo and Aperture are delighted to confirm that the prize continues. The exhibition of the shortlisted books will be hosted in Paris by DELPIRE & CO from November 5โ28. The final jury will take place as planned, and the winner will be announced on Friday, November 13โincluding the announcement of the recipient of the $10,000 cash prize in the First PhotoBook category. The shortlisted books for 2020 will also be featured in Issue 018 of The PhotoBook Review, co-published with DELPIRE & CO. Additional selections from this special issue of The PhotoBook Review, guest edited by Dr. Deborah Willis, will be presented alongside the exhibition of shortlisted books in Paris.
The 2020 shortlist jury took place over the course of three days at Mana Contemporary in New Jersey, and involved the review of more than seven hundred submissions. Our thanks to the shortlist jurors, including Joshua Chuang (New York Public Library), Lesley A. Martin (Aperture Foundation), Sarah Hermanson Meister (MoMA), Susan Meiselas (photographer, Magnum Foundation), and Oluremi C. Onabanjo (independent curator and historian).
โDespite the fact that the usual rhythms of book perusal and discovery have been disrupted, itโs clear that the photobook community has continued to find ways to connect, and more importantly, to keep creating,โ states the jury chair, Lesley Martin. Juror Oluremi Onabanjo asserts, โIn 2020, the book and catalogue in contemporary photographic practice continues to evolve and unfurl in many different directions, while offering more audiences the opportunity to get involved and fall in love with books.โ
The Paris PhotoโAperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards were founded in 2012 to celebrate the photobookโs contributions to the evolving narrative of photography and comprise three major categories: First PhotoBook, PhotoBook of the Year, and Photography Catalogue of the Year. Below are the 35 books selected for the 2020 PhotoBook Awards Shortlist.
First PhotoBook
Stephen Berkman
Predicting the PastโZohar Studios: The Lost Years
Hat & Beard Press, Los Angeles
Judith Black
Pleasant Street
STANLEY/BARKER, Shrewsbury, United Kingdom
Soumya Sankar Bose
Where the Birds Never Sing
Red Turtle Photobook (self-published), Kolkata, India
Maryna Brodovska
My Dear Vira
Self-published, Kyiv, Ukraine
June Canedo de Souza
Mara Kuya
Small Editions (self-published), Brooklyn
Ronghui Chen
Freezing Land
Jiazazhi Press, Ningbo, China
Ryan Debolski
LIKE
Gnomic Book, Brooklyn
Caroline & Cyril Desroche
Los Angeles Standards
Poursuite, Arles, France
Buck Ellison
Living Trust
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France
Charlie Engman
MOM
Edition Patrick Frey, Zรผrich
Zahara Gรณmez Lucini
Recetario para la memoria
Self-published, Mexico City
Jessica Ingram
Road through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial
University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
Janna Ireland
Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographerโs View
Angel City Press, Santa Monica, California
Francesca Leonardi
โO Post Mio
Postcart Edizioni, Rome
Yael Martรญnez
La casa que sangra
KWY Ediciones, Lima, Peru
Sara Perovic
My Fatherโs Legs
J&L Books, New York
Fabio Ponzio
East of Nowhere
Thames & Hudson, London
Agnieszka Sejud
HOAX
Self-published, Wrocลaw, Poland
Diana Tamane
Flower Smuggler
Art Paper Editions, Ghent, Belgium
n e w f l e s h
Gnomic Book, Brooklyn
Photography Catalogue of the Year
Anne Turyn: Top Stories
Elena Cheprakova and Kirsten Weiss, eds.
Weiss Berlin, Berlin
African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other
Steven Evans, Max Fields, and Mark Sealy, eds.
Schilt Publishing, Amsterdam, and FotoFest, Houston
Bill Brandt | Henry Moore
Martina Droth and Paul Messier, eds.
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut
Hommage ร Moรฏ Ver, The Ghetto Lane in Wilna (Schaubรผcher 27): 65 Pictures by M. Vorobeichic
Sigutฤ Chlebinskaitฤ, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, and Nissan N. Perez, eds.
Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Vilnius
Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography
Tina M. Campt, Marianne Hirsch, Gil Hochberg, and Brian Wallis, eds.
Walther Collection, New York, and Steidl, Gรถttingen, Germany
PhotoBook of the Year
Carolyn Drake
Knit Club
TBW Books, Oakland, California
Samuel Fosso
Autoportrait
Walther Collection, New York, and Steidl, Gรถttingen, Germany
Takashi Homma
SymphonyโMushrooms from the Forest
Case Publishing, Tokyo
Thomas Kuijpers
Hoarder Order
Fw:Books, Amsterdam
Adam Lach and Dyba Lach
How to Rejuvenate an Eagle
Self-published, Warsaw
Edgar Martins
What Photography & Incarceration Have in Common with an Empty Vase
The Moth House, Bedford, United Kingdom
Orbita
Glass Strenฤi
Orbita and The Latvian Museum of Photography, Riga, Latvia
Gloria Oyarzabal
Woman Go NoโGree
Editorial RM, Barcelona, and Images Vevey, Switzerland
Luis Carlos Tovar
Jardรญn de mi Padre
Editorial RM, Barcelona, and Musรฉe de lโElysรฉe, Lausanne, Switzerland
Cemre Yeลil Gรถnenli
Hayal & Hakikat: A Handbook of Forgiveness & A Handbook of Punishment
GOST Books, London, and FiLBooks, Istanbul
All photographs by Daniel Salemi.
Note: Given the jurorsโ extensive engagement in the scholarship and production of photography books, the Paris PhotoโAperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards maintain a strict policy of recusal, in which the juror in question must remove themselves from the discussion of books in which they were directly involved; those books must be unanimously voted in by the remaining jurors.
















