We are proud to see so many titles from the brilliant publishers we work with represented in the Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards' Author Book Award and Photo-Text Award shortlists.
Established when the festival was founded, the Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards annually celebrate the extraordinary creativity of the photography book industry and strive to be a key player in promoting it. Each award is endowed with 6,000 euros and rewards a photography book published between May 13, 2025, and May 13, 2026.
The preliminary jury composed this year of Basile Le Cleac’h (Director of the Atelier du Palais), Ana Gallart de Mora (Head of BAL Books), and Emilie Pautus (Founder of the independent bookstore Les Grandes Largeurs), has selected 128 books across all categories. The shortlisted books will be on display throughout the festival at La Mécanique Générale.
THE AUTHOR books Shortlist rewards the best author project for a contemporary photography work:
Featuring:
13-15 November. Portraits: London, by Jack Davison
AK Blakemore
Helions
London, UK, 2026
Design : Matt Willey
13-15 November. Portraits: London is a return to portrait photography from Jack Davison. The small-scale portraits offer a simple yet often sensitively intimate view of his subjects.
Blood Green, by Curran Hatleberg
Oakland, US, 2025
Design : Paul Schiek
Blood Green continues the artist's exploration of the American Southeast. It follows in the vein of Lost Coast, an earlier work set in Eureka, California that depicted residents intertwined within the urban and natural landscapes of the area.
Stockholm, Sweden, 2025
Design : Tony Cederteg
Sorgini's tender portrait of a new family grapples with grief and motherhood.
Sorgini's experience of new motherhood coincided with the loss of her mother. In- Passing exists in between the worlds of birth and death, letting us into the fabric of the artist's changing identity and sense of self.
Marseille, France, 2025
Design : Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi, in collaboration with Perrine Serre
Painters' marks form productive repairs to Kitai's torn archival silver prints in this revisiting of the photographer's work to date.
Maputo Diary, by Ditte Haarløv Johnsen
Ditte Haarløv Johnsen, Eliana N’Zualo
Copenhagen, Denmark, 2025
Design : Louis Montes
Maputo Diary is Haarløv Johnsen's diary of returns to Maputo, forming a picture of family and close friends.
Haarløv Johnsen returned over the years to photograph As Manas- The Sisters, a group of friends from Maputo's trans community, creating a deep bond that intertwined their circle with Haarløv Johnsen's family.
Photographs (1978-1985), by Christine Furuya-Gössler
Marseille, France, 2025
Design : Cécile Poimbœuf-Koizumi, en collaboration with Perrine Serre
Reviving the archive of Christine Furuya-Gössler, a photographer in her own right who was often viewed through the lens of her husband, Seiichi Furuya.
Sound the Sirens, by Bryan Anselm
London, UK, 2025
Design : Camilla Marrese, Tiffany Jones
Sound the Sirens documents the devastation wrought by climate disaster in the United States. Anselm's photographs contrast intense detail (almost to the point of abstraction) with vast shots and fragments of maps.
Swan Moon's Swan Moon, by Swan Moon
Chris Kraus
Oakland, US, 2025
Design : Paul Schiek
A love letter to 90s LA glamour, as told through the eyes of Swan Moon and her friends. Moon's photographs capture a youth spent experimenting with performances of femininity, identity, and popular culture. Featuring an afterword by Chris Kraus.
THE PHOTO-TEXT shortlist rewards the best book in which photographs and words contribute equally to the work.
Featuring:
Kirsten & Yasse, by Eric Tabuchi
Arles, France, 2025
Design : Eric Tabuchi
Fusing familial archives and personal narrative, Eric Tabuchi’s Kirsten & Yasse reflects on the story of his parents. He brings together found images, collage, and compilation to piece together their love and lives.
Not a Cookbook, by Robby Reis
Lee-Anne Millaire Lafleur, Ralph Alerte
Oakland, US, 2025
Design : Robby Reis, Paul Schiek
Not a Cookbook is not a cookbook, but a radical kitchen guide. Recipes are indeed to be found amongst its vibrant pages, but, through its focus on Resto Palme, a Caribbean restaurant in Montreal run by married duo Lee-Anne Millaire Lafleur and Ralph Alerte, Not a Cookbook reflects on the forces of community and family at the heart of food culture.
Congratulations to all who have been shortlisted. The Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards exhibition is on now, running from the 6th of July until the 4th of October.