Over 110 photobook dummies were submitted to the international SELF PUBLISH RIGA contest, and the jury selected An Ordinary Story by Nadezhda Ermakova (Russia) for the First Prize award. The SELF PUBLISH RIGA exhibition took place from June 1 to July 1 at the ISSP Gallery in Riga, Latvia as part of Riga Photomonth 2021.
On June 29, winners of the SELF PUBLISH RIGA contest were announced in Riga, Latvia, selected by an international jury – Bruno Ceschel, founder and director of Self Publish, Be Happy, a visiting lecturer at Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London, and École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), Evita Goze (Latvia), curator of ISSP Gallery and SELF PUBLISH RIGA, independent writer, photographer, Milo Montelli (Italy), founder and director of the independent publishing house Skinnerboox, Alexey Murashko (Latvia), book designer, typographer and Daria Tuminas (Russia/the Netherlands), researcher, photographer and curator. Previously head of Unseen Book Market and the Dummy Award at Unseen Amsterdam. Curator at FOTODOK.
First place went to Russian photographer Nadezhda Ermakova’s book An Ordinary Story, which focuses on the author’s relationship with her son Fedor, mother’s love and son’s dream to have wings to fly like a bird. Ermakova was awarded an exhibition at the ISSP Gallery as part of the next SELF PUBLISH RIGA edition.
Jury’s comment on the choice of Nadezhda Ermakova’s An Ordinary Story: “For this year’s dummy competition we received 112 submissions from 35 countries and many of them were very high-quality, accomplished photobooks which could be printed tomorrow. However, the winner – An ordinary story by Nadezhda Ermakova is the most dummy-like dummy of them all. It is roughly made, but contains great photography and an intimate and touching story of a mother-son relationship and growing up, intertwining photography and text. Its nostalgic feel is emphasized by the raw design and yellowed pages, reminiscent of old books and soviet aesthetics. The story might come across as slightly naïve, but perhaps this warming sensation of real human interaction, radiating very strongly from this book, is exactly what is needed after a year-and-a-half struggle with the pandemic.”
The prize for the best Baltic dummy was awarded to Half Houses by Inga Navickaitė Drąsutė (Lithuania), a thought-provoking visual story of scarcity and loss experienced by a neighbourhood in the Lithuanian town of Kaunas. As jury member Alexey Murashko explained: “In Half Houses Inga Navickaitė-Drąsutė has turned Kaunas’ local architectural phenomena into a historical reference and acute metaphor of tragedy and irreparable loss. A defamiliarization of everyday urban landscape elements combined with the power of photography and the simple yet thoughtful layout of the dummy instantly involves readers. The separate text pieces contribute to the context while not overshadowing the visuals.”
In June, the shortlist of 34 books was on view at the SELF PUBLISH RIGA exhibition at the ISSP Gallery in Riga, Latvia as part of Riga Photomonth. SELF PUBLISH RIGA is a series of events dedicated to photobooks and self-publishing culture in photography and the visual arts, organized bi-annually by ISSP.
More information: https://issp.lv/en/self-publish-riga/2021
Exhibition partners and supporters: Riga Photomonth, FineArtPrint, State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, Riga City Council, Embassy of the United States of America, Krāsu serviss.
