PHOTOBOOK DUMMY AWARD 2021

The Hong Kong Photobook Dummy Award aims to support emerging artists and provide them with the opportunities to showcase their works in international festivals. It is our honour to have five experts in photography and arts as our judges, including Andreas Müller-Pohle, the founder of European Photography, Stanley Wong, a renowned designer and contemporary artist, Lau Ching-ping, the chairman of the Hong Kong International Photo Festival, Yanyou Yuan Di, the founder of Jiazazhi, and Zhuang Wubin, an independent curator and image researcher. 

Winners

Shortlist

  • After Winter. Album #58 by Kseniia FEDOROVA
    After Winter. Album #58 by Kseniia FEDOROVA from Malta About the Book The feeling of a dark hole haunted me after my parents passed away. They were colorful characters from the generation of the 1950s, with all the characteristic features of their era like idealism, romanticism, and lyrism. Father, Boris Fedorov, was a famous Russian artist: a glass master, graphic artist, sculptor, and painter. On the ruins of the USSR their plans, love, and art underwent a dramatic transformation as well as their generation. They loved each other, but the relationship between them was rather complicated. Mom died tragically in … Read more
  • BULLET by Marco MARZOCCHI
    BULLET by Marco MARZOCCHI from Italy About the Book The project was born in 2017 at term as a natural consequence and second part of Marco’s first project OYSTER which later turned into a book, edited by Void. The book won the first prize of the Gomma GRANT in 2017. BULLET unlike OYSTER in which Marco talked about his dysfunctional family, it is about himself. Through images of people, archive and landscapes plus notes that gradually become poems, the book is a summary of 48 years of his life. The book closes with a specific question. It is a book … Read more
  • Drift Bottle by Soen LEE
    Drift Bottle by Soen LEE from South Korea About the Book Drift Bottle is a book that combines photographic work that has been taken since 2019. The work started with banners asking for the search for the missing daughter. The book contains photos of banners hanging all over the city, photos of the surroundings along the route where the banners were hung, and photos of the changes in the place of the village they lived in on the night of the full moon. In making this book, I included pictures of families that I didn’t think were work. And I … Read more
  • Forever Mine by Anna BEDYNSKA
    Forever Mine by Anna BEDYNSKA from Poland About the Book Japan is the only developed G7 country with no joint custody. The country’s parental rights system (Shinken) states that after the separation of the parents it is only one of them who will get the parental rights. This law triggers the act of parental abduction. A partner who is about to split is unilaterally taking a child away from the household and disappears. He/she registers under a new address and after six months a “law of continuity” applies and the child, like any other estate, belongs to the new property. … Read more
  • Gaze
    Chan Kai Chun, Hong Kong
  • Halo Tango by Diane BIELIK
    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 … Read more
  • Hiroshima Graph – Everlasting Flow by Yoshikatsu Fujii
    Hiroshima Graph – Everlasting Flow by YOSHIKATSU Fujii from Japan About the Book On an early midsummer morning, from a clear, pure blue sky, a single bomb was dropped. In an instant, the town was transformed into a sea of fire, and lost everything. After the War, as the leading Peace Memorial City, Hiroshima has arranged for some bomb survivors to become storytellers, and their tragic experiences have been delivered to people around the world. However, many other survivors like my grandmother, who is now over 90 years old, have mostly not talked about their own experience of the bombing … Read more
  • Hong Kong Photozine & Photobook Dummy Award 2025 Winners and Shortlist Announcement
    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 … Read more
  • Incorrect Theory by Luigi CECCONI
    Incorrect Theory by Luigi CECCONI from Italy About the Book Every escape is in itself a journey. Luigi Cecconi’s journey is a missed one. A failed, yet ardently desired escape, in an adolescence inhabited by a limping everyday life, spent in one of the difficult suburbs of Rome, in the 90s. Incorrect Theory is the story of an escape that never happened. The images are dreams and projections of the young photographer who, in a continuous evasion from reality, searched in his own photographs for an ideal New York. That glossy New York that, at the end of the last … Read more
  • Once Upon The Sea
    Zhou Han Shun, Singapore
  • Origin by Victoria LI
    Origin by Victoria LI from Hong Kong About the Book Origin is a project that explores migration using maple trees as a metaphor for the artist’s diasporic experience. Maple has over 200 species and subspecies with different shapes, sizes, and colours. Although the origin of the plant cannot be traced, research suspected that it originated from Asia. The maples then spread to the West through the botanical exchange that happened in the 19th century. Even though the artist is a non-local herself, she has lived in more than 12 places in the city for the past 2.5 years. The stress … Read more
  • Photo Entanglement
    Shek Po Kwan, Hong Kong