Hong Kong Photozine & Photobook Dummy Award 2025 Winners and Shortlist Announcement
Winners and Shortlist Announcement
Photozine and Photobook represent another unique language of visual creation. From experimental works to heartfelt visual stories documenting everyday life, this year’s open call received nearly 200 submissions, including entries from over 30 countries and regions. These works not only showcase the talent and passion of the creators but also highlight how visual publishing bridges cultures and dialogue.
This year, the “Hong Kong Photozine Award” has been newly introduced. A photozine, though lightweight and handy, holds profound depth and limitless potential within its simplicity. The winning and shortlisted works reinterpret “Hong Kong” from diverse perspectives, presenting the creators’ emotions, stories, and reflections on the city. Each piece is a journey of exploration, with innovative approaches to both storytelling and craftsmanship, demonstrating the vitality of Hong Kong’s visual storytelling.
“A’Muntagna” by Emanuele Occhipinti (IT) “by the apple tree” by Elias Hassos (GE) “Blood under the Sundown Light” by Alejandra Arévalo Martínez (CO) “Belly of The Giant Serpent” by Chuanduan Chen 陈川端 (CN) “80°05′” by Kouta Takahashi (JP) “Reverberation” by Gulshat Gubaidullina (RU) “Condo Convos” by Linda Cheung 張璧殷 (HK) “There Is No Death” by Jason Hendardy (USA) “ROKKOKU” by Fuminori Sato (JP) “A Flower on the Rock” by Omura Yudai (JP/CN) “LIMBUS MUNDO” by Shaiana Po 布美欣 (HK) “Rue Désiré Chevalier” by Claire Cocano (FR)
Hong Kong Photozine Award 2025 Winners (Open Category)
“Frozen Resilience” by Chris Wong 黄海輝 (AU) “日落紅塵 After Sun” by Colin Lau (HK) “Fragment of Passing” by Ho Yan Lee 李浩恩 (HK) “在你腦海中曬相 Developing Film in Your Mind” by Dory Cheng 鄭多莉 (HK)
Hong Kong Photozine Award 2025 Winners (Student Category)
“The Adventure of an Orange” by Lang Chen 陳朗 (HK) “夜晚” by Lam Yan Lam 林琳欣 (HK) “門” by Pak Shing Chiu 趙柏丞 (HK) “天眼” by Hsuan Ying Lai 賴宣穎 (HK) “E” by Tung Yan Wu 吳彤恩 (HK)
Hong Kong Photobook Festival 2025 Programme Schedule
In addition to the three-day photobook market and exhibition, a series of book launches, talks, and workshops will also be held—everyone is welcome to participate!
The organiser will implement crowd control measures. To attend talks, workshops, or other activities, please register online in advance, as only a limited number of walk-in spots will be available. For details, please refer to the Hong Kong Photobook Festival’s social media channels.
Hong Kong Photobook Market 2025
2 May (Fri) – 4 May (Sun) 2025
2 May (Fri)｜1500 – 2000
3 May (Sat)｜1100 – 2000
4 May (Sun)｜1100 – 1800
PMQ
35 Aberdeen Street, Central, Hong Kong
OPEN CALL FOR PHOTOZINE AND PHOTOBOOK DUMMY AWARD 2025 – APPLICATION GUIDELINES
The Photobook Dummy Award is one of the highlights of the Hong Kong Photobook Festival, which aims to support emerging artists and provide them with opportunities to showcase their work at international festivals. This year photographers, artists and creative talents from all over the world are as usual invited to submit their works. Thanks to the support of various partners, the winning and shortlisted dummies from previous year have been toured and exhibited in numerous places, included but not limited to New Zealand, Germany, India, Taiwan, Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy.
In addition the Photobook Dummy Award, this year we are excited to introduce the newly launched “Photozine Award” which aims at encouraging more people, especially the youth, to join the photozine creation and publication sectors. The worldwide open call for Photozine Award is divided into Open and Student Categories. Specifically, the Student Category is targeting at open recruits of works from students at various levels globally.
About the selection scheme, jury from the Photobook Dummy Award will shortlist at most 15 finalists in the first round, while for the Photozine Award, 10 finalists from each category will be shortlisted. Eventually 3 winners for the Photobook Dummy Award and each of the two Photozine Award Categories will be selected among the finalists.
All the finalists’ works will be exhibited at the Hong Kong Photobook Festival 2025. Winners can utilise this opportunity to have professional exchange with the jury and also share their creation process with the participating audience.
Submission Deadline
Participants should submit their works with their submission form(s) so that the package arrives at Lumenvisum’s office by 15th February 2025 (Hong Kong Time) (by post or in person). Please allow ample time to enter and mail your works. Late submissions will not be considered by the jury.
Prizes
Winner’s dummies/zines and other shortlisted dummies/zines will be exhibited in the Hong Kong Photobook Festival 2025.
The winner of the First Prize of Photobook Dummy will be granted a maximum subsidy of HKD$20,000 for participation in the visit of the international photobook festival; or self-published photobooks.
The winner of the First Prize of Photozine will be granted a maximum subsidy of HKD$3000 (per category) for participation in the visit of the international photobook festival; or self-published photozines.
Entry Fees
The application fee is waived this year.
Costs of shipping are covered by the applications and are not refundable.
Eligibility
Photobook Dummy Award
The Award is open to photographers, artists, designers and all the creative talents from worldwide.
There is no specific age and nationality limit for entering the Award.
The photobook dummy can be done individually or collectively.
The photobook dummy must be original.
The photobook dummy must be self-published or unpublished. It cannot be published by any registered publisher or has never been committed to being published by any other publisher.
ISBN and is not a requirement for the Award.
The photobook dummy can be presented in any language.
The photobook dummy must be created on or after the 1st of January 2022.
Photozine Award (General and Student Category)
The Award is open to photographers, artists, designers and all the creative talents.
The theme of this year’sPhotozine Award is “Hong Kong”
Applying for Open or Student Category: There is no specific age and nationality limit for entering the Award, while the Student Category is open to full-time students only. Please upload your student identity card or other proof in your application.
The photozine can be done individually or collectively. All candidates in a group must be students if they are submitting jointly under the Student Category.
The photozine must be original.
The photozine must not exceed 32 pages.
The photozine must be self-published or unpublished. It cannot be published by any registered publisher or has never been committed to being published by any other publisher.
The photozine can be presented in any language.
The photozine must be created on or after the 1st of January 2024.
Important Note
Applicants may apply for both awards. However, every work is only eligible for one award’s application (i.e. either Photobook Dummy Award, Student Category or Open Category of Photozine Award).
Each applicant can only submit one entry for each award.
All shortlisted work will be featured in various exhibitions globally. In order to ensure the pieces’ good condition throughout the tour,shortlisted applicants need to submit a second physical copy of their works to the organiser. This second copy should arrive at Lumenvisum within 21 days after the announcement of the shortlist.
The organiser is not responsible for any damage of the works during the exhibition.
Timeline
1st October 2024
Applications Opening
15th February 2025 at 18:00 (HKT, UTC/GMT: +8:00)
Applications Closing
April 2025
Finalists Announcement
May 2025
Winners Announcement
Application Procedure
Step One – Online Registration
Fill in the online submission form below. Upload the PDF file including all pages of the book/zine and the image of the book/zine cover. Please provide the photos of book/zine cover as shown in the instruction below:
The form must be completed either in Chinese or English.
The form must be submitted before the submission of the physical copy.
Print the acknowledgement of receipt or confirmation message as a proof of successful registration.
Step Two – Submission of Physical Copy – Pack your photobook dummy/photozine
Your submission should include (i) a physical copy of your photobook dummy/photozine; and (ii) a registration proof.
All the items for submission must be packed in a sealed envelope.
Mark “Hong Kong Photobook Dummy Award 2025” or “Hong Kong Photozine Award 2025” on the envelope.
Step Three – Submission of Physical Copy – By Post or In Person
Submission by Post
Submission in Person
For submission by post, the package must arrive at the following address by 15th February 2025. All incomplete or late entries will be declined.
For submission in person, the applicant should submit the physical copy within the opening hours* of Lumenvisum.
Address Lumenvisum Company Limited L2-02 Jockey Club Creative & Arts Centre 30 Pak Tin Street, Shek Kip Mei, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
N/A
*Opening Hours Monday to Friday (09:30-13:00 & 14:00-18:00) Saturday, Sunday & Public holidays (11:00-13:00 & 1400-1800)
PHOTOBOOK DUMMY AWARD 2025 JUDGE
*In no particular order
Andreas Müller-Pohle
Andreas Müller-Pohle is a Berlin-based media artist and publisher. He is the founder of European Photography, an independent art magazine for international contemporary photography, new media and artificial intelligence, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this year. He has edited the major works of media philosopher Vilém Flusser, including the seminal Philosophy of Photography. Andreas has published and exhibited extensively, and his photographic, video, and computer works are in numerous private and museum collections worldwide. He has been a visiting professor and lecturer at numerous institutions in Europe, North and South America, and Asia. His current theoretical and practical focus is on the intersection of photography and artificial intelligence.
Charis Poon
Charis Poon is an artist and educator who makes zines, audio pieces, draws comics, writes, and teaches. Across these media, her practice focuses on the everyday, on contemplation, on close relationships. Charis worked as a freelance graphic designer and editor for most of her professional career, with forays in creative strategy and podcasting. After finishing her MA in Design Expanded Practice at Goldsmiths University of London, she moved back to Hong Kong, where she calls home. Now, she teaches Social Design at the PolyU School of Design where she experiments with how teaching and learning takes place. She is interested in poetics in communication, learning through making, slow growth, and collective endeavors.
Kurt Tong
Kurt was born in Hong Kong in 1977 and earned his MA in Documentary Photography at the London College of Communication in 2006. His projects explore his Chinese roots and understanding of his motherland.
Since then, he has published several monographs exploring themes ranging from Chinese funeral offerings to the Asian diaspora to self-combed women. His work has been shown worldwide, including exhibitions at the Himalayas Museum in Shanghai, the Times Art Museum in Beijing, the Finnish Museum of Photography, Rencontres d’Arles, and The Photographers’ Gallery in London.
In 2022, he was awarded the prestigious Prix Elysee and released “Dear Franklin,” an epistolary novel about a tragic love story during WWII in China. MOMA New York named it one of the best photo books of 2022. In 2024, he published “Krampus,” a book about the Alpine Christmas monster, which was accompanied by a multi-sensory exhibition alongside a concert in Innsbruck, Austria.
Michelle Chan is a relational artist who works primarily in photography. She uses the camera and manipulated images to generate connections and conversations with people. Her works often touch upon the notion of home, sense of belonging, human connections and bonding, and familial relationships. More specifically, they reflect the inherited familial beliefs that inform our daily gestures and rituals, and explore the Chinese beliefs that have become recurrent over centuries. She is the founder of Phoboko, a platform that brings people together through photobooks and the topics they contain. As a community, Phoboko interrogates photography as a medium, promotes the vision of local Hong Kong artists while in dialogue with other photographers in the Asia-Pacific region.
Zhen SHI
Zhen SHI works across various mediums, combining photography, book objects, and fiction-documentary narratives to create a complex interplay of storytelling. Through the artificial manipulation of individuals’ lived experiences and intervention in intellectual legacies, her practice explores the intricate relationship between reality and memory, often within the broader themes of “Archive and Fiction” and “Private and Public.”
In 2015, Shi founded La Maison de Z, a French publishing house dedicated to visual art, contemporary photography, and independent publications, using publishing as a form of research, examining the intricate dynamics between memory and reality. From concept to design, visual imagery to material choices, La Maison de Z continually pushes the boundaries of paper as a medium while investigating the role of art books as a unique language.
Zhuang Wubin
6 July 2019 / Jakarta
Courtesy Evan Andraws Latief
Zhuang Wubin is a writer who makes photographs, publications and exhibitions. He is interested in photography’s entanglements with modernity, colonialism, nationalism, “Chineseness” and the Cold War in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.
Zhuang is a recipient of the Prince Claus Fund research grant (2010) and a Lee Kong Chian research fellow at the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore (Dec 2017 to Jun 2018). He is the major grantee of The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2018. He has been invited to research residency programmes at Institute Technology of Bandung (2013), Asia Art Archive (AAA), Hong Kong (2015), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2017) and the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project at AAA (2018). He is the contributing curator of the Chiang Mai Photo Festival (2015, 2017, 2020).
Published by NUS Press, Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey (2016) is his fourth book.
PHOTOZINE AWARD 2025 JUDGE
*in no particular order
Charis Poon
Charis Poon is an artist and educator who makes zines, audio pieces, draws comics, writes, and teaches. Across these media, her practice focuses on the everyday, on contemplation, on close relationships. Charis worked as a freelance graphic designer and editor for most of her professional career, with forays in creative strategy and podcasting. After finishing her MA in Design Expanded Practice at Goldsmiths University of London, she moved back to Hong Kong, where she calls home. Now, she teaches Social Design at the PolyU School of Design where she experiments with how teaching and learning takes place. She is interested in poetics in communication, learning through making, slow growth, and collective endeavors.
Michelle Chan is a relational artist who works primarily in photography. She uses the camera and manipulated images to generate connections and conversations with people. Her works often touch upon the notion of home, sense of belonging, human connections and bonding, and familial relationships. More specifically, they reflect the inherited familial beliefs that inform our daily gestures and rituals, and explore the Chinese beliefs that have become recurrent over centuries. She is the founder of Phoboko, a platform that brings people together through photobooks and the topics they contain. As a community, Phoboko interrogates photography as a medium, promotes the vision of local Hong Kong artists while in dialogue with other photographers in the Asia-Pacific region.
Paul Yeung
Paul Yeung Tak-ming is a freelance photographer, an educator and a curator. He graduated from MA in Image and Communication (Photography) at Goldsmiths College, London. Yeung embarked on his profession as a photojournalist and photo editor and received numerous photography awards in the past 20 years. His contemporary works mostly concern social situation expressed in a humorous sense and are interested in the genres, narrative and appropriation of photographic language. Yeung opened his first solo photography exhibition “The Flower Show” in 2012. He published his first photobook “Yes Madam, Sorry Ah Sir” in 2017. Yeung was also one of the founding members of several local independent photozines, including “Mahjong”, “Not Accord With…” and “Fu Pao Mary”. His other favorite works include “The Advertising Billboard is Nothing”, “The Good Old Days in 1989”, “No Paint No Games”, “Dark Light” etc., His works and photobooks were exhibited internationally and were collected by The Hong Kong Heritage Museum and private collectors.
HONG KONG PHOTOBOOK DUMMY AWARD TOURING EXHIBITION– Jarkata, Indonesia｜Pentas Buku Foto
Our shortlisted dummy photobooks have arrived at the seventh worldwide stop – Jakarta, Indonesia and will be exhibited at the Pentas Buku Foto until 29 February! For more event details, please visit their official website.
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Exhibition Details:
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Date : 1 – 29 February 2024
Venue : ITC Fatmawati, blok F no.16
Hong Kong Photobook Dummy Award Touring Exhibition– Goa, India｜Sunaparanta Art Centre
Our shortlisted dummy photobooks have arrived at the sixth worldwide stop – Gao, India and will be exhibited at the Library, Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts until 23 December! For more event details, please visit Sunaparanta Art Centre.
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Exhibition Details:
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Date : 8 – 23 December 2023 (Mon – Sat)
Time : 11:00 – 18:30
Venue : Library, Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts
Hong Kong Photobook Dummy Award Touring Exhibition – New Delhi, India｜Khoj Studios
Our shortlisted dummy photobooks have arrived at the fifth worldwide stop – New Delhi, India and will be exhibited at the Khoj Studios from 24 November to 1 December! This is the very first time bringing the shortlisted and winning titles of the Hong Kong Photobook Dummy Award to India, many thanks for the arrangement of Offset Projects! For more information about Offset Projects, please visit https://offsetprojects.in/ .
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Exhibition Details:
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Offset Projects: PHOTOBOOK EXHIBIT
Opening : 24 November 2023, 16:00 – 20:00
Date : 25 November – 1 December 2023 (Mon – Sat)
Time : 11:00 – 19:00
Venue : Project Space, Khoj Studios, New Delhi
When the Waves Are Gone
by
Christian BABISTA
from Philippines
About the Book
It’s difficult to see the life that departed family members had beyond the stories and family photos that surround them. My own father had to leave my family to provide for us, just as his own father did as a seaman—their own unique experiences obscured by distance and time to those that love them. And yet, in some odd twist of fate, I discovered that my own grandfather had a penchant capturing life…his life…in ways that I never imagined.
Through his eyes, and now mine, this book’s intro reads:
“For the waves that continue to ebb and flow. To remember the time that has passed, Telling ourselves to forget The beautiful and the bad of what has happened. I realized how life is a voyage through the ocean. It is a continuous crashing of waves, and regardless of the journey, we all end up in the shores.
‘In this type of job, your other foot will always be left in the sea.’
My grandfather said these lines to me when I was a kid. And since then I have always wondered what they meant.
As I grew older I slowly realized that when you set sail, there is always a risk of drowning and never coming back. You never know what’s going to happen. Like waves, you never know if you will be able to go back to your family or you will end up swallowed by the ocean.
I am using my grandfather’s photos to reconstruct his journey and to find closure to the questions he left unanswered when I was a kid.
At the same time, new, deeper questions began to form as I sifted through his photos.
What is it like to be someone whose other foot will always be left in the sea?”
Halo Tango
by
Diane BIELIK
from United Kingdom
About the Book
The book is a fictional photographic narrative told from a single found object -a small framed charcoal portrait of a woman ‘Mrs Eyles’ made by another woman Betty Steer in 1962. I found the drawing in a local London charity shop and took it back to my studio, where it began to resonate.
Part still life, part landscape and part found imagery this series of photographs evolved to form a cryptic story, set within a claustrophobic domestic stage.
In the book an accompanying text imagines the act of these two women coming together, one to draw the other to sit. And contemplates ideas of unity, solidarity, the sisterhood and quieter (or unsung) forms of feminist action or resistance.
The Yoshida Dormitory Old Darkroom
by
KANTA Nomura
from Japan
About the Book
While continuing to document the 109-year-old Yoshida Dormitory of Kyoto University, the oldest existing student dormitory in Japan, I discovered an old darkroom that still exists in the dormitory. By developing the photographs I had recorded on the photographic paper left in the darkroom, I attempted to burn the time and memories that had accumulated in the Yoshida Dormitory.
It was the spring of 2019 when I first opened the door to the darkroom in the Yoshida dormitory. This darkroom had been unattended for more than 30 years, dusty and like a junkyard. In fact, it had been more than ten years since I started taking pictures of Yoshida Dormitory, but even though I knew of the existence of the darkroom, I had never bothered to open the door. This was because it was located in a particularly dark place at the end of a long corridor, and the darkness that peeked through the door was secretive and eerie. The time suddenly came. I pushed open the hard door of the darkroom. In the dimness, a ray of light leaked through a torn blackout curtain, and dust danced quietly. The air was tranquil but heavy, as if it had been vacuum-packed for a long time. The clutter had been abandoned at a certain point in time. And among the rubble-like oversized garbage, I found photographic paper from that time, covered with dust and mold. What if I could burn new photos of Yoshida Dormitory onto the old photographic paper that had absorbed so much time? With this idea in mind, I restored the old darkroom, which had been neglected for a long time, so that it could once again be used as a darkroom. In this special darkroom, I began printing. The old photographic paper formed an image on the silver particles in the developing solution. The photosensitive agent in the photographic paper had deteriorated, and the shading of the blacks and the sharpness of the image were different from the usual results. It was frustrating, but it was a strange sensation of something overlapping with the photograph I had taken. I felt as if I were facing the memories that had accumulated in this place, and that my record of more than ten years was coming into focus with the memories of the past. Although located in a student dormitory, this isolated space became even quieter at dawn. As if to signal the beginning of a play, the morning sun began to faintly leak through the dark curtains. The cool night air still lay in the long corridor.
This is the story of the Yoshida Dormitory, the oldest student dormitory in Japan.
The Kyoto Imperial University dormitory, the predecessor of Yoshida Dormitory, was established in 1897, more than 100 years ago. The Yoshida Dormitory is a self-governing dormitory that has been run by students themselves for a long time. It was also a place where a lot of people from inside and outside of the university gathered for the performance of plays and music and fostered student culture.
In recent years, the dormitory students have been at odds with the university, which has been demanding that they all leave the dormitory due to the building’s age. However, in April 2019, the university finally filed a lawsuit against the dormitory students, demanding that they vacate the building. The dormitory students disagreed. They have asked for a withdrawal, but the conflict continues.
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