Star Photobook Dummy Award

The Star Photobook Dummy Award is an annual award for photobook dummies, created in 2021 in tribute to the loving creativity of graphic designer Inés Casals. This is a unique award in the area, which professionalizes a photobook dummy side by side the author. Learn more:

Annual award for photobook dummies

The Star Photobook Dummy Award is an annual award for photobook dummies, created in 2021 in honor to the loving creativity of graphic designer Inés Casals.

This initiative offers authors the opportunity to publish a photobook, giving them full support in the final optimization and publication process. Always with the exceptional qualities that defined Inés: her passion, attention and affection. In this way, we want to honor her memory and keep alive the legacy of her work, her creativity and her love for photobooks.

Organized by the Photographic Social Vision Foundation, in collaboration with the publishers Phree, Ediciones Posibles and RM, the Star Photobook Dummy Award offers the opportunity and support to publish a photobook, in its final design and ideation phase, Presented by an international team of nominees.

The Award is intended for a single winning person or group among the nominees, and consists of a contribution of €10,000 for the printing and publication of a photobook dummy and also includes 3 advisory sessions, as well as national distribution and international distribution of the award-winning book, in addition to sending it to 50 international contacts in the photographic and publishing sectors.

The Star Photobook Dummy Award Advisory Committee members are: Arianna Rinaldo, Silvia Omedes, Helena Velez Olabarria, Javier Aristu, Alice Monteil, Mireia Carbonell, Mireia Plans, Juan Valbuena, Laia Abril, Alex Llovet, Ramon Pez, Rafa Arocha and Toni Amengual.

Selection process of the photobook dummies

Participation in the Star Photobook Dummy Award is by nomination only. Once a year, an international team of nominees, together with members of the Award Advisory Committee (people professionally and personally close to Inés Casals) each of them proposes a maximum of 3 dummies, to be evaluated by the jury. Every year the jury will be made up of four members of the Advisory Committee and at least one representative of the three publishers collaborating with the Award. The members of the jury will not be able to nominate dummies. Check the list of nominators.

Values of the Star Photobook Dummy Award

The jury will evaluate the dummy based on its concept and design, but also on the story(s) it narrates, highlighting projects imbued with the human values that defined the life and work of Inés Casals, such as: friendship, empathy, intimacy, warmth, love, beauty, poetry, uncertainty, defiance, tenacity, empowerment, self-determination, resilience, acceptance, self-care, or compassion, without forgetting irony and the will to avoid all kinds of cliche.

Winning photobook dummies in previous editions

: “I imagined it empty” by Ruth Lauer-Manenti

: «Devil’s Rib» by Mateusz Kowalik

: «Eduardo & Miguel» by Ignacio Coló

The jury of the 3rd edition selected “I Imagined It Empty” by Ruth Lauer-Manenti as the winning dummy of the 3rd edition of the Star Photobook Dummy Award. This is a project that portrays the farewell of a loved one with a simple and poetic look. Its visual narrative gives rise to an intimate world that directs the reader towards the vertigo of human existence.

The jury of the 2nd edition selected “Devil’s Rib”, by Mateusz Kowalik, as the winning dummy of the 2nd edition of the Star Photobook Dummy Award. It is a project about the radical and inspiring way of living in nature that some people choose as a way of life, modern hermits who voluntarily decide to escape the hectic pace of urban life to inhabit a wild environment, with its charms and difficulties.

The jury of the 1st edition selected “Eduardo & Miguel”, by Ignacio Coló, as the winning dummy of the 1st edition of the Star Photobook Dummy Award. This work introduces us to the daily life of the Portnoy brothers, two twins over 50 years old, who have never been separated since birth. The photobook that portrays them has two covers, corresponding to each of the twins, and works like a mirror that reflects one in the other until they come together in the center of the book.

Here you can see a sample of the media national and international repercussion that the launch of these photobooks had:

Annual calendar of the Star Photobook Dummy Award

The annual calendar of the Star Photobook Dummy Award is:

Open call: April 8.
Open to nominations and promotion from April to June 8.
Assessment by the jury of all the dummies nominated in June, July and August.
Meeting and decision of the jury in September.
Announcement of the winning dummy in October.
Sessions with mentors and completion of the dummy between October and December.
Production and printing of the book in January and February of the year after the call.
Distribution in March of the year after the call.
On April 23 of the year after the call, the winning photobook will be presented.

Rules of the contest and nominators

In the download icon that you will find below you have the contest rules of the 3rd edition:

Meet the nominating professionals and the jury of the 3rd edition.

More information: staraward@fundacionpsv.org.

Award patrons

This award is possible thanks to the generosity and support of the Casals family and the people who sponsor it, who in the 2nd edition have been: Begoña Díaz-Aguado, Clara Isamat, Silvia Omedes, Adriana Pacheco, Álvaro Picardo, Antonia Quiñones , Marta Roca, José de Ros, Mireia Sandalinas, Amparo Tamarit. And in the 1st edition: Fundació Photographic Social Vision; José de Ros; Cristina Pedrol and Diego Ballester; Reprogenetics, Mireia Sandalinas, Carles Giménez; Editorial Blume and Silvia Omedes.

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