Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards
About
Co-founded in November 2012 by Paris Photo and the Aperture Foundation, Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards celebrate the photobook’s contribution to the evolving narrative of photography.
Paris Photo and Aperture are pleased to announce the 2024 Paris Photo-Aperture Book Awards winners. These awards recognize excellence in three major categories of photo book publishing: First PhotoBook, PhotoBook of the Year, and Photography Catalog of the Year.
After receiving more than 940 books from fifty-nine countries, discover the winners below.
Photo Credits: Grégoire Grange, Paris Photo-Aperture Book Award - Detail - Paris Photo, 2024
First Photobook Award
A prize of $10,000 was awarded to the photographer/artist whose first photo book, completed and available to the public, was judged the best of the year.
The 20 shortlisted books in this category were exhibited at the latest edition of Paris Photo.
Tsai Ting Bang
Born from the Same Root
Self-published, Taïwan
Design : Tsai Ting Bang & Shū Hé Zhì
Tsai Ting Bang’s Born from the Same Root forms a moving portrait of the artist’s older brother Hsien and reflects upon their shared family trauma. The boys grew up in separate homes, and as a young adult, Hsien began suffering from mental health issues and cut contact with the family for three years. Tsai uses the book to explore the estrangement, misrecognitions, and mystery at the heart of their bond, interweaving archival family photographs and his own tender portraits of Hsien and his day-to-day life. “The book tells a simple but powerful story and is full of lovely, unguarded moments” says juror Anna Planas. The intimately sized volume involves a clever bipartite structure, forcing the reader to turn the pages of the book in opposition, as one might open a gatefold. Per Planas, “we loved how the design thoughtfully reflects both the distance and closeness of the brothers’ relationship.”
PhotoBook of the Year
This prize was awarded to both the photographer and the publisher of the photo book judged the best of the year.
The 10 shortlisted books in this category were exhibited at Paris Photo 2024.
Taysir Batniji
Disruptions
Loose Joints Publishing, Marseille, France / Londres, Angleterre
Design : Loose Joints Studio
Opaque, yet frighteningly urgent, Taysir Batniji’s Disruptions compiles pixelated screenshots from WhatsApp video calls to his family in Gaza, taken between April 2015 and June 2017. The fragmentary aesthetic of fragile phone connections offers a metaphor for the breakdown of the psyche in the midst of daily life compromised by conflict. This compact softcover houses about seventy images, which are accompanied by a poignant text from photo-historian Taous R. Dahmani. Amid warped portraits and pixelated landscapes, the viewer is confronted with bursts of vibrant color signaling failed communication, broken only by solid pages of green that display the date of each call. Disruptions is an oblique but essential reflection on life under occupation. “As Gaza is obliterated in real time, Batniji’s Disruptions is a timely reminder of the precarious nature of human life,” remarks juror Negar Azimi.
Photography Catalog of the Year
Since 2014, this prize has been awarded to the publisher(s) and/or organizing institution(s) responsible for the best exhibition catalog or museum publication of the year. The 5 shortlisted books in this category were presented at Paris Photo.
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
Shining Lights, edited by artist Joy Gregory and Taous Dahmani, is a restorative anthology that charts Black women’s essential but often overlooked contributions to Britain’s photography scene in the late twentieth century. Extensively researched and vividly illustrated, the book showcases a tremendous range of visual materials, including photographs from over fifty artists, archival images, documents, and more. This constellation of visual resources is carefully organized by theme—self-portraiture, family, and community activism—and includes scholarly essays, personal reflection, a roundtable discussion, and a detailed timeline. “I love the use of the materials; there’s a friendliness to the cardstock cover, and beautiful neon spine that carries through in how certain elements get highlighted within the running text,” remarks juror Nontsikelelo Mutiti. “For a project so comprehensive, it feels very generous and inviting. I’m so glad that this project exists.”
Jurors special mention
i am (not) your mother
Hady Barry
Self-published, Penumbra Foundation, New York
Design by Hady Barry
In 2002, amid a civil war, Hady Barry and her family fled Côte d’Ivoire to resettle in Senegal. As her mother left for the United States to seek asylum, and her father was mostly absent, traveling for work, Barry, age thirteen, found herself taking care of three younger siblings. Her self-published photobook i am (not) your mother interlaces portraits and documentary photographs, archival imagery, journal entries, and transcribed conversations, unpacking the trauma of an adolescence cut short by the tremendous responsibilities of parenting. The book’s imagery alternates between the vivid, nostalgic palette of rediscovered family photographs and the black-and-white of Barry’s own austere pictures of nature, people, and interiors. “There’s this parallel with her personal story and the personal way she made the publication” says juror Anna Planas. The book’s smaller 6 ½-by-9 inch format and use of one-of-a-kind Risograph printing, befit the intimacy and rawness of Barry’s painful subject matter.
Photo Credits: Grégoire Grange, Winners of the Paris Photo-Aperture Book Award from left to right: Joy Gregory, Tsai Ting Bang & Taysir Batniji - Paris Photo, 2024
Photo Credits: Grégoire Grange, Paris Photo-Aperture Book Award - Detail - Paris Photo, 2024
Shortlist jury - 2024
This year, the jury is composed of:
- Anna Planas, Artistic Director, Paris Photo
- 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
Final jury - 2024
- Kim Bourus, director, Higher Pictures Gallery
- Mame-Diarra Niang, artist
- Azu Nwagbogu, curator
- Jean-Baptiste Talbourdet, Creative Director, M Le Magazine du Monde
- Lisa Suttcliffe, curator, department of photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo Credits: Grégoire Grange, Paris Photo-Aperture Book Award - Detail - Paris Photo, 2024