Announcing the Winners of the 2016 PhotoBook Awards
Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation are pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 edition of the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, celebrating the photobook’s contribution to the evolving narrative of photography.
Winner of First PhotoBook ($10,000 prize)
Michael Christopher Brown
Libyan Sugar
Publisher: Twin Palms Publishers, Santa Fe, NM, 2016
Designed by Michael Christopher Brown and Ramon Pez
A record of photographer and filmmaker Michael Christopher Brown’s life during the 2011 Libyan Revolution, Libyan Sugar serves as a trip through a war zone. “An impressive book—you feel as though you are in the war with the photographer,” Thomas Zander says. Katja Stuke adds, “Libyan Sugar offers a strong combination of the personal and the documentary.”
Winner of Photography Catalogue of the Year
Karolina Puchała-Rojek and Karolina Ziębińska-Lewandowska
Wojciech Zamecznik: Photo-graphics
Publisher: Fundacja Archeologia Fotografii, Warsaw, 2015
Designed by Anna Piwowar and Magdalena Piwowar
Polish-English catalogue Wojciech Zamecznik: Photo-graphics is the first complex compilation of work by Wojciech Zamecznik, the Polish graphic artist, architect, photographer, and interior designer. “A true discovery,” says Agnès Sire.
Winner of PhotoBook of the Year
Gregory Halpern
ZZYZX
Publisher: MACK, London, 2016
Designed by Lewis Chaplin
Moving from the desert east of Los Angeles, and moving west toward the Pacific, Gregory Halpern’s photographed Los Angeles as a site of fantasy that reflects the city’s ironies, chaos, and paradoxes. “Great photography is the ultimate arbiter,” says Paul Graham. “The outstanding work in Gregory Halpern’s ZZYZX carries the day.”
Special Jurors’ Mention
Annett Gröschner and Arwed Messmer
Taking Stock of Power: An Other View of the Berlin Wall
Publisher: Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, Germany, 2016
Designed by Carsten Eisfeld
Taken by members of the East German Border Patrol in the 1960s, the photographs in Gröschner and Messmer’s expansive two-volume project Taking Stock of Power: An Other View of the Berlin Wall were originally intended to document weak spots along the wall. Over fifty years later, the images, which were left in undeveloped rolls and forgotten in federal archives, are brought to light and restored, complete with maps and texts.
This year’s shortlist selection was made by Christoph Wiesner (Artistic Director, Paris Photo), Lesley A. Martin (Creative Director of the Aperture Foundation book program and The PhotoBook Review), David Campany, Ann-Christin Bertrand (Curator, C/O Berlin), and Dr. Rebecca Senf (Chief Curator and Norton Family Curator of Photography at the Center of Creative Photography, Tucson).
The shortlist was first announced at the Opening Days of the European Month of Photography on October 1, 2016. The thirty-five selected photobooks are profiled in issue 011 of The PhotoBook Review, Aperture Foundation’s biannual publication dedicated to the consideration of the photobook. Copies will be available at Aperture Gallery and Bookstore. Subscribers to Aperture magazine receive free copies of The PhotoBook Review with their summer and winter issues.
