Paris Photo and Aperture are pleased to announce the winners of the 2022 Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards on the tenth anniversary of the awards. From the thirty-five shortlisted titles, a final jury in Paris selected this year’s winners in three major categories: First PhotoBook, PhotoBook of the Year, and Photography Catalogue of the Year. The jury included Sunil Gupta, photographer and author; Anne Lacoste, director of the Institut pour la Photographie, Lille, France; Alain Quemin, professor of sociology of art at Université Paris-8 / Institut d’Etudes Européennes; Holly Roussell, independent curator and art historian; and Pauline Vermare, independent curator, writer, and historian.
All shortlisted and winning titles will be profiled in a printed catalogue, to be released and distributed for free during Paris Photo, along with the Winter 2022 issue of Aperture magazine. As well, an exhibition of the thirty-five books shortlisted for the 2022 PhotoBook Awards is currently on view at Paris Photo and will travel to Printed Matter in New York City this January 2023.
Below, read about this year’s winning titles.
PhotoBook of the Year
Mohamed Bourouissa
Périphérique
Loose Joints, Marseille, France
Périphérique presents the entirety of Mohamed Bourouissa’s long-term series of the same name, in which he staged photographs set in the Parisian suburbs that have increasingly become home to large immigrant communities. The book uses multiple paper stocks to denote different aspects of Bourouissa’s creative process: numerous preparatory images at the beginning and end are printed on lighter stock, while heftier gatefolds cleverly expand the narrative of more complex images in the middle. These design choices expertly steer the reader to look more carefully at the intercepting gazes and carefully considered body language of his subjects. Juror Miwa Susuda notes the effective seriality that results from how the images have been arranged: “As a book, this work becomes one unified chapter—a coherent story from beginning to end. Bourouissa is a great storyteller, using staged photography to question the larger issues around the media representation of immigrants.” Périphérique leaves readers questioning the potential fallacies of a photograph and the complexity of how the image can shape and influence perceptions.