Announcing the Winners of the 2023 Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards

New York and Paris, November 10, 2023—Paris Photo and Aperture are pleased to announce the winners of the 2023 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards—the eleventh annual celebration of the photobook’s contributions to the evolving narrative of photography. Tender by Carla Williams (TBW, Oakland, CA) is the winner of $10,000 and the First PhotoBook award. Vince Aletti: The Drawer (SPBH, London) is the winner of PhotoBook of the Year. The selection for Photography Catalog of the Year is The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project, Diwas Raja Kc and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, eds. (Nepal Picture Library / photo.circle, Kathmandu, Nepal); and the Jurors’ Special Mention goes to Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures, Sandrine Colard, ed. (Lannoo Publishers, Tielt, Belgium, and Fotomuseum FOMU, Antwerp, Belgium).

A final jury met in Paris on November 9, 2023, to select this year’s winners. The jury included Laia Abril, artist; Tamara Berghmans, curator, Fotomuseum Antwerpen (FOMU); Alexis Fabry, curator and founder, Toluca Fine Art; Alona Pardo, curator, Barbican; and Mark Sealy, director of Autograph and Professor of Photography Rights and Representation at University of the Arts London. 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.

The winner of the PHOTOGRAPHY CATALOG OF THE YEAR, The Public Life of Women: A Feminist Memory Project by Diwas Raja Kc and NayanTara Gurung Kakshapati, is an inspirational collection of images, documents, and the profiles of key contributors to feminism and champions of women’s rights in Nepal. 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. Artist Laia Abril notes that this collection represents not just the preservation of a visual archive, “but a project that has actively created a record of women’s history and lives that had not existed previously. It’s a catalog with the power to put the ‘herstory’ of Nepalese women on the map for the first time.”

The PHOTOBOOK OF THE YEAR, Vince Aletti: The Drawer, illustrates the vivid accumulation of photographic ephemera gathered over the years by esteemed photography critic and curator Vince Aletti. Juror Alexis Fabry makes note of how this unique book savvily captures the ongoing circulation of images today, calling it “a thrilling record of some of most seductive decades for photography in New York, seen through the eyes of someone at the very heart of the reactor.”

Juror Alona Pardo describes the winner of the FIRST PHOTOBOOK, Carla Williams: Tender, as “a captivating archival revisitation of the artist’s younger self; an intimate exploration of self-portraiture, sexuality, pleasure, performance, and desire.” The project excavates and represents work made in the 1980s and ’90s—an intimate glimpse into a pivotal moment of the artist’s life, while also serving as a meditation on Black feminist expression.

The final jury also chose to award a JURORS’ SPECIAL MENTION to Recaptioning Congo: African Stories and Colonial Pictures, which juror Mark Sealy describes as “a pressing and urgent book that works culturally, politically, and historically, to bring our collective histories of a new and greater place of understanding.”

This year, the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards received 961 books from sixty-one countries. September 20–22, 2023, the shortlist was decided in New York over the course of three concentrated days of review and deliberation by an international jury: 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.

In Paris, Tamara 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.”

A selection of books shortlisted for the Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards is available for purchase at the Delpire & Co booth (SE16) during Paris Photo, as well as at the Delpire & Co shop in Paris.

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.

To view the full shortlist, visit https://aperture.org/editorial/announcing-the-2023-photobook-awards-shortlist/

About the 2023 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards
The Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards were founded in 2012, and consist of three prizes in the following categories:

First PhotoBook: A $10,000 prize is awarded to the photographer(s)/artist(s) whose first finished, publicly available photobook is judged to be the best of the year. Twenty books from this category were selected for the shortlist, all of which are now exhibited at Paris Photo. Recent winners include Sabiha Çimen: HAFIZ; Sasha Phyars-Burgess: Untitled; and Buck Ellison: Living Trust, among others.

PhotoBook of the Year: This prize is awarded to the photographer(s)/artist(s) and publisher(s) responsible for the photobook judged to be the best of the year. Ten books from this category were selected for the shortlist, all of which are now exhibited at Paris Photo. Recent winners include Mohamed Bourouissa: Périphérique; The Banda Journal by Muhammad Fadli and Fatris MF; and Gloria Oyarzabal: Woman Go No’Gree, among others.

Photography Catalog of the Year: Added to the Awards in 2014, this prize is awarded to the publication(s), publisher(s), and/or organizing institution(s) responsible for the exhibition catalog or museum publication judged to be the best of the year. Five books from this category were selected for the shortlist, all of which are now exhibited at Paris Photo. Recent winners include Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970; What They Saw: Historical Photobooks by Women, 1843–1999; and Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography, among others

About Paris Photo
Paris Photo is the world’s largest international art fair dedicated to the photographic medium. An annual event for collectors, professionals, artists, and enthusiasts, Paris Photo offers its visitors the most qualitative and diverse selection of artworks alongside an ambitious public program with leading figures in the field.

About Aperture
Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From its base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through its acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society. For more information, visit aperture.org

Aperture’s programs and operations are made possible by the generosity of our board of trustees, our members, and other individuals, and with major support from 7G Foundation, Charina Endowment Fund, Documentary Arts, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Ishibashi Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Anne Levy Charitable Trust, Henry Luce Foundation, Mailman Foundation, MurthyNAYAK Foundation, Grace Jones Richardson Trust, San Francisco Foundation, Thomas R. Schiff Foundation, Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Stuart B. Cooper and R. L. Besson, Kate Cordsen and Denis O’Leary, Thomas and Susan Dunn, Michael Sonnenfeldt, Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović, National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State Council on the Arts, with support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

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Press Contacts

Aperture
Lauren Van Natten, +1 212.946.7151, publicity@aperture.org

Paris Photo
Maurie Crouzet, marie.crouzet@rxglobal.com