Announcing the Winners of the 2017 PhotoBook Awards
Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation are pleased to announce the winners of the 2017 edition of the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, celebrating the photobook’s contribution to the evolving narrative of photography. “Each of the prizes have been awarded to very committed projects that show a dedication to and respect for the subject,” said final juror Krzysztof Candrowicz. “What I see in all of the books points to a change in traditional thinking about the photobook, blurring the boundaries and; expanding the scope what a photobook can be.”
Winner of Photography Catalogue of the Year
Mattie Boom, Hans Rooseboom
New Realities: Photography in the 19th Century
Publisher: Rijiksmuseum/Nai, Amsterdam, 2017
Designed by Irma Boom Office (Irma Boom/Tariq Heijboer)
“I appreciate that New Realities takes what might be considered ‘dusty’ material of the nineteenth century and brings new perspectives and fresh design to enliven this classical material. It’s important as an example of how to preserve and capture new interest in the history of photography.”—Nathalie Herschdorfer
Winner of PhotoBook of the Year
Dayanita Singh
Museum Bhavan
Publisher: Steidl, Göttingen, Germany, 2017
Designed by Dayanita Singh and Gerhard Steidl
“Dayanita Singh has extended the concept of what a book might be with Museum Bhavan: a book of books, each one exploring an Indian motif, from printing presses to the administrative archive. Her work is a sophisticated merger of East and West sensibilities, and celebrates the democratic possibilities of the offset multiple.”—Mitch Epstein
Winner of First PhotoBook ($10,000 prize)
Mathieu Asselin
Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation
Publisher: Verlag Kettler/Acte Sud, Dortmund, Germany, 2017
Designed by Ricardo Báez
“Asselin’s Monsanto is a courageous, investigative project that connects evidence-driven photography and visual research to the democratization of knowledge; it’s important that this book exists in physical form, as a document, and not just the virtual world.”—Christiano Rainondo
Juror’s Special Mention
Carlos Spottorno and Guillermo Abril
La Grieta (The Crack)
Publisher: Astiberri Ediciones, Bilbao, Spain, 2016
“Very seductive in its draw on nostalgia and forms of popular culture, it’s a very interesting strategy to bring out attention anew to a topic that we see every day in the news.”—Nathalie Herschdorfer
A final jury at Paris Photo selected this year’s winner. The jury included: Florencia Giordana Braun, director and founder of Rolf Art gallery, Buenos Aires; Krzysztof Candrowicz, the artistic director of the Triennial of Photography in Hamburg; Mitch Epstein, New York–based, award-winning photographer whose most recent book, Rocks and Clouds, will be published by Steidl this fall; Nathalie Herschdorfer, director of Museum of Fine Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland; and Cristiano Raimondi, head of development and international projects at the New National Museum of Monaco and an invited curator for Platform 2017.
This year’s shortlist selection was made by Gregory Halpern, whose ZZYZX won the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook of the Year Award in 2016; Lesley A. Martin, Creative Director, Aperture Foundation and Publisher, The PhotoBook Review; Kathy Ryan, longtime director of photography at the New York Times Magazine; Joel Smith, Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York; and Christoph Wiesner, artistic director of Paris Photo.
The shortlist was first announced at the New York Art Book Fair. The thirty-five selected photobooks are profiled in issue 013 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.
