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Created to support the extraordinary development of photographic publishing, the Book Awards of Les Rencontres d'Arles reward three categories of works: the Author's Book Award, the Historical Book Award and the Photo-Text Book Award. Amongst the shortlisted books, we were happy to spot a few we have been already supporting across our platforms.
Rencontres d'Arles 2023 | The Book Awards
Created to support the extraordinary development of photographic publishing and to contribute to its wider dissemination, the Book Awards of Les Rencontres d'Arles reward three categories of works: the Author's Book Award, the Historical Book Award and the Photo-Text Book Award, supported and encouraged by the Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’écriture et la littérature, which celebrates the relationship between texts and images.
Each award is endowed with 6,000 euros and rewards a photographic work published between June 1, 2022 and May 26, 2023 (included). A pre-selection followed by the designation of the winning works is established by a pre-jury and a jury composed of experts in the field of photographic books. All the shortlisted books are archived in the library of the École nationale supérieure de la photographie d'Arles and are exhibited throughout the festival at Monoprix. This year's pre-judging panel comprised Laura Morsch-Kihn, Emilie Pautus and Pierre Hourquet.
Amongst the shortlisted books, we were happy to spot a few we have been already supporting across our platforms.
SHORTLIST - AUTHOR BOOK AWARD
DREAM MACHINE
RUBEN LUNDGREN
200CM, JIAZACHI
NINGBO, CHINA
DESCRIPTION
This album consists of 35 photographs
Ruben Lundgren
collected at antique markets and via websites in China over the past decade. The colourful graphics are copied from an album originally produced in the 1960s which offers a historical tour along the banks of the famous West Lake. The portraits capture the futuristic appeal that machines like cars, planes or televisions once had. Like the invention of the internet, smartphone or e-bike in recent decades, most innovations slowly slip away into the common present.
ABOUT RUBEN LUNDGREN
Beijing based photographer and curator Ruben Lundgren graduated from the University of the Arts Utrecht in 2005 and moved to China where he finished his masters degree photography at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He made a name within the conceptual photography duo WassinkLundgren with publications as Empty Bottles (2007) and Tokyo Tokyo (2010). FOAM showed a retrospect of their work in 2013. He now works as a photojournalist for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant and as an independent curator of Chinese photography. Together with Martin Parr he co-edited The Chinese Photobook (2015) and with Timothy Prus he published MeNu (2018) a tasty collection of Chinese vernacular food photography. As a guest curator of BredaPhoto 2020 he curated China Imagined offering 24 contemporary photography projects from China including the sticker album Wow Taobao.
SHORTLIST - AUTHOR BOOK AWARD
VERSO
THOMAS SAUVIN
RVB BOOKS & JIAZAZHI PRESS
PARIS, FRANCE
DESCRIPTION
With VERSO Thomas Sauvin revisits his collection of ID photos amassed in China over the last fifteen years. By exposing them to a strong light source, the characters inscribed on the back of the prints show through by transparency and materialize on unfamiliar faces. These handwritten notes provide us with allusive pieces of information about unknown people who obviously no longer belong to our world. It is as if the fusion of the front and back sides opened up a new register, that of a latent encounter between an image and its hidden side.
ABOUT THOMAS SAUVIN
Since 2009, the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin has salvaged discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing, negatives that were destined to destruction. His Beijing Silvermine archive, one of the largest archival projects in China, now encompasses over 850000 anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005, thus allowing the reconstruction of a large part of the history of popular analogue photography in the country. This unceasingly evolving archive provides a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions, while impacting on our collective memory of the recent past.
SHORTLIST - AUTHOR BOOK AWARD
SHOOTING THE TIGER
XIAOXIAO XU
THE ERISKAY CONNECTION
BREDA, THE NETHERLANDS
DESCRIPTION
The snow covers the rooftops, muffles the sound, and makes us wonder if what we are seeing is real. Gods, emperors, and warriors with coloured robes and faces walk the white narrow roads. The noise of drums and fireworks will soon scare the demons. Shooting the Tiger by Xiaoxiao Xu (CN/NL) portrays the traditional festival Shehuo in the Northwest of China. Farmers invoke blessings for an abundant and fruitful harvest, through theatrical performances, songs, and acrobatics. It is the festival that welcomes the warmth of spring, the joy of blossoming trees.
In a world where the connection between people and the soil has become frail, Shooting the Tiger celebrates an aspect of Chinese culture that is disappearing, or better, evolving. Traditions speak of who we are and where we come from, powerful tools that connect people. Xu shows that there is comfort in traditions, even when they are not ours. We follow Xu on her journey into the colourful world of Shehuo. Traveling from village to village, the residents welcome her into their homes in preparation for the events. These moments allow for the mysterious and alienating atmosphere of the festival to appear. Wear your best costume, paint your eyes, be ready to shoot the tiger: it is the beginning of a new season.
ABOUT XIAOXIAO XU
Xiaoxiao Xu (CN/NL) moved from China to The Netherlands in 1999 when she was a teenager. In 2009 she cum laude graduated from the Photo Academy of Amsterdam. Since then she worked on her own projects, balancing in-between documentary and autonomous work. She wants to tell stories from a unique perspective that leaves spaces for the reader to be freely interpreted, stories that evoke people’s imagination, that lure them to look over and over and dream away. In 2020 she won the Jimei X Arles Women Photographers Award with the book Watering my horse by a spring at the foot of the Long Wall.
SHORTLIST - AUTHOR BOOK AWARD
LEFT, RIGHT
CAI DONGDONG
LA MAISON DE Z
PARIS, FRANCE
DESCRIPTION
Left, Right, as its title suggests, is a book that may be read from left to right or from right to left, giving it a mirrored structure. Among approximately 600,000 anonymous photographs in his collection, artist Cai Dongdong catalogs them according to the period, the costume and makeup of the subjects, and notes written on the backs of the photos. Then he compares them in the left and right design as he pairs up these women portraits of similar age, facial structure, and posture from two different historical periods, specifically before and after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. On the right-hand page are photographs taken during the Republic of China between 1912 and 1949, while those on the left-hand page are taken between 1949 and 1978, from the founding of the People's Republic of China to the time of reform and opening up.
ABOUT CAI DONGDONG
Born in Tianshui, Gansu, in 1978, Cai Dongdong 蔡东东 joined the People’s Liberation Army at a young age, taking up a role as a portrait photographer for enlisted soldiers. This job became his formal training in the medium, developing into a career path as he returned to Beijing and opened his own studio. Through the use of archival, found photography, and installation, Cai creates half-fragmented realities. Taking readymade materials – a nod to Duchamp's Dadaist sensibilities – he pierces through the skin of these photographs with mirrors, arrows, and other objects, forming what he calls 'photo-sculptures.'
More information
Les Rencontres de la photographie, Arles
The Book Awards
July 3 – September 24, 2023
www.rencontres-arles.com
