Announcing the Winners of the 2024 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards

 

New York, October 3, 2024—Paris Photo and Aperture are pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2024 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards—an annual celebration of the photobook’s enduring role within the evolving narrative of photography. Now in its twelfth year, the awards recognize excellence in three major categories of photobook publishing: First PhotoBook, PhotoBook of the Year, and Photography Catalog of the Year.

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.”

The shortlisted books will be exhibited at Paris Photo, followed by an international tour, including New York at Printed Matter, in January 2025, among other venues to be announced.

On Thursday, November 7, 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 8, at 3:00 p.m. (CET), in Paris, and announced on Aperture.org and Parisphoto.com.

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ABOUT THE AWARD CATEGORIES:
The Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards, founded in 2012, 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 have been selected for the shortlist, and they will be presented to the final jury for selection and exhibited during Paris Photo.

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 have been selected for the shortlist, and they will be presented to the final jury for selection and exhibited during Paris Photo.

Photography Catalog of the Year: Added to the PhotoBook 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 have been selected for the shortlist, and they will be presented to the final jury for selection and exhibited during Paris Photo.

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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

Tsai Ting Bang
Born from the Same Root
Self-published, Taipei
Design by Tsai Ting Bang

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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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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SHORTLIST JURY*
2024 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards

Negar Azimi is a writer, editor, and curator. A former Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers Fellow at the New York Public Library, she is the editor in chief of Bidoun, a publishing, educational, and curatorial platform, and is a member of the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, and is a board member of Artists Space. Her essays, criticism, and reportage have appeared in Artforum, Bookforum, Frieze, Harper’s, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the New York Times, among others. With Pati Hertling, she organizes the epistolary series Deadlines and Divine Distractions.

Jacqueline Bates is the photography director of Opinion at the New York Times. She was the founding photography director at the California Sunday Magazine, which won National Magazine Awards for Excellence in Photography in 2016 and 2017. In 2024, Times Opinion was a National Magazine Award finalist in Photography for the first time. Previously, she was the senior photo-editor of W magazine and worked in the photography departments of Elle, Interview, and Wired. Bates holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts.

Michael Famighetti is editor in chief of Aperture magazine and Aperture’s editorial program. In 2013, he organized a redesign of the magazine, which won a 2018 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, and recently oversaw another refresh, which debuted with the Summer 2024 issue. In addition, Famighetti works with the digital team to shape online content and commissions and edits books. He is also a visiting critic at the University of Hartford’s MFA program and a participant in the Mentors program at the School of Visual Arts. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Bookforum, and Aperture, among other publications.

Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born visual artist and educator. She is invested in elevating the work and practices of Black peoples’ past, present, and future through a conceptual approach to design, publishing, archiving practices, and institution building. Mutiti holds a diploma in multimedia from the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA) and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in graphic design. Mutiti is the director of graduate studies for graphic design at the Yale School of Art. She has held academic positions at ZIVA, State University of New York College at Purchase, and the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Anna Planas is the artistic director of Paris Photo. She was previously the director of Delpire & Co, a bookshop and gallery space dedicated to photography since it was established in Paris in 2020. She is the cofounder of Temple, a platform and gallery dedicated to emerging artists and artist books. In 2019, she cocurated Temple Arles Books at Rencontres d’Arles, France. She has curated exhibitions with international institutions and festivals and managed the Magnum Gallery until 2013.

*The Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards maintain a strict policy of recusal in which jurors 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.

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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.

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.

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PRESS CONTACTS

Lauren Van Natten, Aperture
publicity@aperture.org

Marie Crouzet, Paris Photo
marie.crouzet@rxglobal.co