Paris Photo and Aperture have unveiled the shortlist for the 2025 Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards, marking the thirteenth year of this prestigious annual celebration that honors photobooks' enduring significance in photography's evolving narrative. The awards recognize excellence across three major categories: First PhotoBook, PhotoBook of the Year, and Photography Catalog of the Year.
This year's competition drew exceptional global participation, with over one thousand book submissions from fifty-five countries worldwide. The entries included particularly notable submissions from Ecuador, Lesotho, Uruguay, and Vietnam, showcasing the truly international scope of contemporary photobook publishing.
From September 17-19, an international jury convened in New York for three intensive days of review and deliberation. The distinguished panel comprised Brendan Embser, senior editor at Aperture; Florian Koenigsberger, technologist and photographer; Paul Moakley, executive producer at The New Yorker; Anna Planas, artistic director of Paris Photo; and Keisha Scarville, artist.
Brendan Embser emphasized the remarkable diversity of this year's selections, stating: "The 2025 PhotoBook Awards shortlist represents an extraordinary range of artistic styles, geographic perspectives, and design innovation, showing how the photobook remains one of the most compelling and effective vehicles for storytelling today. From catalogs that consider how digital images have entered the hard drive of our lives, to intensely personal chronicles of individuals facing the extremities of politics and the desire for freedom, these publications speak to a year of vitality and achievement by independent publishers and artists."
Anna Planas highlighted the upcoming exhibition's significance, noting: "Displayed on the balconies of the Grand Palais during Paris Photo, the shortlisted titles of the PhotoBook Awards will captivate an international audience and stand as one of the most anticipated highlights of the fair."
The First PhotoBook category features twenty outstanding debut publications from emerging photographers worldwide. Notable entries include Eleonora Agostini's "A Study on Waitressing" published by Witty Books in Turin, Italy; Genesis Báez's bilingual "Blue Sun / Sol Azul" from Capricious Publishing in New York; and Widline Cadet's "Ritual [Dis]Appearance / Seremoni Disparisyon" from Black Mountains Studio in Los Angeles. Other remarkable first-time publications span from Hélène Bellenger's "Bianco Ordinario" from France to Clara Simas's "My father died three times / Meu pai morreu três vezes" from Brazil, demonstrating the global reach of contemporary photobook artistry.
The PhotoBook of the Year category presents ten exceptional works that represent the pinnacle of photobook publishing. Standout titles include Hicham Benohoud's "The Classroom" from Loose Joints Publishing, Soumya Sankar Bose's "A Discreet Exit Through Darkness - Things We Lost Last Night" from Kolkata, and Edgar Martins's provocatively titled "Anton's Hand Is Made of Guilt. No Muscle or Bone. He Has a Gung-Ho Finger - a Grief-Stricken Thumb" from The Moth House in Bedford, United Kingdom.
The Photography Catalog of the Year category showcases six outstanding exhibition catalogs and scholarly publications. These include "Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain" edited by Renée Mussai and published by Thames & Hudson and Autograph in London, and "Calamita/á: An Investigation into the Vajont Catastrophe" edited by Gianpaolo Arena and Marina Caneve. The category also features "Paiter Suruí, Gente de verdade: Um projeto do Coletivo Lakapoy" from Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, highlighting indigenous Brazilian perspectives.
A special mention goes to Wolfgang Tillmans's catalog "Nothing Could Have Prepared Us/Everything Could Have Prepared Us," edited by Florian Ebner and Olga Frydryszak-Rétat and published by Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Spector Books, Leipzig, Germany.
The shortlisted books will be prominently displayed at Paris Photo, which opens to the public from November 13 through November 16. Following the Paris exhibition, the collection will embark on an international tour, including a stop at Printed Matter in New York in January 2026, with additional venues to be announced.
The final phase of judging will take place on Thursday, November 13, when a panel of five jurors will meet in Paris to select the winners across all three prize categories. The highly anticipated results will be revealed during a ceremony at Paris Photo on Friday, November 14, at 3:00 p.m. Central European Time, with simultaneous announcements on Aperture.org and Parisphoto.com.
