African Photobook of the Year
African Photobook of the Year
December 1, 2022
Untitled, ca. 1930, unknown photographer, from the Aladji Adama Sylla collection, excerpt from The African Lookbook by Catherine McKinley, courtesy of the Eiger Foundation
This year’s international jury selected one first-place and three second-place winners from a pool of 4000 entries. The prize for best African Photobook of the Year goes to Catherine E. McKinley’s publication The African Lookbook: A Visual History of 100 Years of African Women. The second prize is shared between Potšišo Phasa’s A City on a Hill, Tom Huber’s Nguecokh, and Michele Sibiloni’s Nsenene.
Most of us have grown up with images of African women that were anthropologic in nature – superficial depictions of an exotic world that did not reveal the deeper personalities of those portrayed. Equally prevalent were the visual documents of destitution and war – almost veering into a ‘poverty voyeurism’.
In the The African Lookbook, curator Catherine E. McKinley takes an entirely different approach: drawing on her extensive collection of historical and contemporary photographs by celebrated African masters, studios and anonymous artists alike, McKinley presents a pictorial chronicle that captures the dignity, playfulness, modernism and grandeur of African women across a hundred-year period, spanning from 1870–1970.
For further information visit Eiger Foundation African Photobook of the Year Awards
Untitled, ca. 1930, unknown photographer, from the Aladji Adama Sylla collection, excerpt from The African Lookbook by Catherine McKinley, courtesy of the Eiger Foundation
Tom Huber, NGUECOKH
© Tom Huber, courtesy of the Eiger Foundation
Potsiso Phasha – A Friend in a Fight
© Potsiso Phasha, courtesy of the Eiger Foundation
Nsenene by Michele Sibiloni
© Michele Sibiloni, courtesy of the Eiger Foundation