The Star Photobook Dummy Award celebrates its second edition and, shortly, we will announce the winning photobook mockup. The nominators of the 2022 edition submitted a total of more than 150 photobook mockups as candidates, from forty countries and with a slightly higher number of female participants than male.
The jury for this edition of the contest, made up of professionals with a long history in the sector, has evaluated all the proposals and has selected the finalist models, candidates to become a photobook.
Reunión del jurado II Star Photobook Dummy Award
10 photobook dummies candidates to the Star Photobook Dummy Award
The candidate dummies, in alphabetical order of their authors, are:
“While I was waiting” by Julia Autz (basedin Berlin, Germany).
Nominated by Alexa Becker.
© Julia Autz
Alexander Lukashenko has ruled Belarus for more than 27 years. A whole generation that does not know its homeland without the authoritarian president. What does it mean to grow up in these circumstances? What is it like to live in a country where the development of liberal democratic values is forbidden? Due to the ongoing repression, fewer and fewer people are rebelling and resisting the rules of the regime.
“The Fish Girl” by Veronica Borsani (based in Buenos Aires, Argentina).
Nominated by Gisela Volá.
© Veronica Borsani
“La Niña Pez” is an autobiographical photobook that is part of the social problem of intra-family sexual abuse. The general objective is to produce a first-person visual universe to publicize a problem that crosses times, cultures and social classes, in order to generate a “domino effect” in other survivors to break the silence. The photobook seeks to show what “cannot be seen” following the concept of “attentional blindness” (Marck and Rock, 1998) that describes the impossibility of seeing aspects of the family environment even if they are at first sight.
“A Poor Sort of Memory” by Tracy L. Chandler (based in Los Angeles, USA).
Nominated by Sonia Berger.
© Tracy L. Chandler
It is a collection of photographs taken in and around the author’s hometown, in California desert. A land that is strikingly beautiful but also feels claustrophobically familiar and alien due to disassociation. It is, therefore, about ambivalence and the generation of questions about the point of view to the past, the present and the future.
“Lullaby and last goodbye” by Pierluigi Ciambra (based in Cosenza, Italy).
Nominated by Mariateresa Salvati, Irene Alison, Luis Cobelo and Alessia Glaviano.
© Pierluigi Ciambra
An autobiographical photobook that tries to do the exercise of looking back to our history and emotions and a trauma, finally overcoming it through a different point view.
Great fears, loneliness, deterioration of relationships with the closest people and a refuge in the inner world, protected and fantastic, as a defense from reality and alleviate discomfort.
“You Felt the Roots Grow” by Sabine Hess (based in London, UK).
Nominated by Emma Bowkett.
© Sabine Hess
About feeling the roots grow as a personal record of a time between hope and pain. The project is about the recent loss of the author’s father and how the family experiences his cancer illness. Waiting 7 years for some good news that never really came. The story is about waiting, silence, hope, strength, growing intimacy and understanding, but also the growth of cancer, invisibility, pain and disappointment.
“Devil’s Rib” by Mateusz Kowalik (based of Warsaw, Poland). Nominated by Krzysztof Candrowicz.
© Mateusz Kowalik
The author spends the last few years in the Polish wilderness, exploring the phenomenon of hard living close to nature. Most of his characters are united by the desire for a better life without many stimuli, overexploitation of the planet and constant consumerism.
However, the author’s goal is not to convince people of this lifestyle, but for each of us to stop for a moment and ask ourselves if perhaps there is something we can learn from this approach to living.
“The Ridge” by Pablo López (based in Granada, Spain). Nominated by Jesús Micó.
© Pablo López
The Ridge is a zone of jungle running through New Delhi from north to south, named for being situated on the foothills of an ancient mountain, the Aravalli Range. During multiple stays in Delhi the author has photographed the city following its 40 km of border forest. This work is a documentation of the thickness of the Ridge and its surroundings, from the banks of the Yamuna to the suburbs that have grown on its edge. Between the artificial and the wild, its labyrinth of paths harbors a particular silence.
“Mother” of Marisol Méndez (based in Bolivia). Nominated by Verónica Fieiras.
© Marisol Méndez
Family photos act as windows to the past. In the portraits, the women are depicted as multiple conflicting versions of Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary but recovered to reflect Andean traditions. The project explores the influence of race and religion in shaping the perception and representation of Bolivian women.
Located between documentary and fiction, the images describe an existence interconnected by physical and mythological elements, a dance between the Hanan Pacha (the upper world in Inca mythology) and the Uku Pacha (the lower or inner world) where women experience potentiality, change, loss, decline and death.
“He loves you, mom” by Bárbara Traver (based in Madrid, Spain). Nominated by Juanjo Justicia.
© Bárbara Traver
Everybody is daughter or son, and at some point everybody has looked at the face of her or his mom or the face of the woman who welcomed them, wondering more about that woman.
In addition to being a mother, the person who has educated, protected, and even mistreated, has a life that the sons and daughters are unaware of. That is why one day the author decided, moved by an impulse, to portray her own mother and, through those images, try to answer the questions about that woman who had always been there for her.
“Twana’s Box” by Rawsht Twana (based in Qaladze, Iraq). Nominated by Heba Hage-Felder.
© Rawsht Twana
“Twana’s Box” involves the research, study and dissemination of the photographic archive of the unknown Iraqi Kurdish photographer Twana Abdullah who, between 1974 – 1992, photographed daily life and society in the northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan .
With the production of a book the aim is to light on a rare, precious and essential record of Iraqi visual history. Furthermore, the hope is to use this extraordinary work to create opportunities for dialogue around the ways we produce and perceive images.
Star Photobook Dummy Award winner
On October 10th it will be public the winning dummy of the Star Photobook Dummy Award, an annual award to turn a dummy into a photobook through the publishers Phree, Possible Editions and Editorial RM.
One more year, with the Star Photobook Dummy Award we pay tribute to the loving creativity of the graphic designer Inés Casals.
