In the past twenty years, photographers, designers, and publishers worldwide have started a craze for "photobooks." With the emergence of domestic art book fairs in recent years, more and more authors have joined the creation of photobooks. Therefore, we attempted to host the IDPA, an award focused on photobook dummies, hoping to bring together some photography creators and photobook makers through this award. In the past three editions of the IDPA, the total number of submissions each year did not exceed 100. However, in the extraordinary year of 2022, when image creation faced great challenges, we were delighted to receive 141 photobook dummy works from 119 authors (groups)! We are deeply moved by everyone's immense creative enthusiasm and have greater expectations for this year's dummy award exhibition!
No one can accurately describe what a photobook is or define what it should be like. In each edition of the IDPA, we receive various photobook dummies that exceed our expectations, each containing the wisdom and attempts of the creators. I would like to thank every contributor; your trust gives us more perseverance. Finally, I hope everyone can view the final award selection with a calm mind. All submitted works have their merits, and the winning works may just be a bit more "lucky."
- Ni Liang, Founder of the Wuxiang Photobook Dummy Award
The IDPA 2022 Jury
Shortlisted Entries
Best Photobook Dummy of the Year
"Dream" by Fu Hongxia
Author's Statement
Dreams feel like randomly intruding into a dark space, where everything loses color without sunlight, and everything seems to be both still and flowing. Clear and indistinct, brightness and darkness. Like a light bird and the weight of darkness alternating, playing a silent piece of music.
Author Bio
Fu Hongxia loves flowers and plants and enjoys nature.
Jury Comments:
Ma Liang: This book proves that an extremely simple approach, used accurately, can be so powerful. The book is entirely printed on tracing paper, which is a very simple design, but it's perfect for this dream-themed album. The author meticulously arranged the images and carefully selected the right transparency of the paper, allowing each picture to overlap appropriately. The front and back pages mutually support each other in context. In the process of flipping through the pages, clarity and illusion validate each other, forming an interwoven narrative. The layered image sequence changes with each page turn, making the content of the images seem infinitely variable, creating a unique and charming reading experience.
btr: The accumulation of impressions and emotions when flipping through a photobook, the visual afterimage and recollection when turning a page, all become tangible through the transparency of the paper. The subtle texture of the black and white images becomes richer in the paper-constructed layers, achieving a "shifting perspective" within the book.
Zhu Xinyi: "Dream" is a book where form and content are highly integrated, to the extent that this work achieves its best state only in the form of a "book." The book itself is extremely simple: same-sized landscape photos, black and white, and the same material (tracing paper). However, the transparent tracing paper pages, with overlapping photos, provide a very rich viewing space. It truly feels like a "dream."
Author's Statement
I created a character and extracted the letter ‘K’ from my name to give to her. Facing the new world, I am at a loss. Fortunately, I have a pair of eyes and a camera, so I take photos. I'll put aside the meaning for now, and like the wind, pass through the crowd, constantly observing, and thus feel the real existence of being a person and the freedom of being myself.
Author Bio
Born in 1990 in Shanghai and currently living and working in Zhuhai. He Kuan Kuan attained a bachelor’s degree from Shanghai University Film Academy and a Master’s degree from Kyushu Sangyo University in Japan. Has exhibited works in Shanghai, Foshan, Tokyo, Fukuoka, and other places.
Ma Liang: "K" feels like an art film. The preface on the first page is very captivating, starting with a poignant story about a brief encounter between the author and a friend named K. The text is moving, the photos are well-taken, and the juxtaposition editing of the images is especially brilliant, like a film montage, where the meaning occurs between two unrelated images, not just within the images themselves. There are no photos of K, but I can still feel her presence, like a memory where the specific image becomes blurry over time, but some vague details always hint at the past existence. These fragments will reassemble into perceptible people and things, transcending the concrete and becoming clearer than the concrete.
I also like the silver cover of this booklet, which resembles a mirror in a bathroom blurred by steam, and the red letter K in the title seems to be painted with nail polish, giving it a very evocative feel. The author mentions that K often looks at herself in the mirror for a long time, which is something young people often do. In retrospect, this is one of the most divine moments of youth, as if without thinking, yet seeing through everything. This book contains a similar kind of gaze.
Author's Statement
This book was created in Hangzhou, starting in March 2022, and took six months to complete. It has 54 pages and contains 50 images. "Why Plants" is inspired by the Japanese photographer Takuma Nakahira’s "Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary." Unlike a dictionary that rejects any shadows, this book focuses on the shape of tree trunks, the texture of bark, and the veins of leaves, interpreting the ambiguity retained within plants as humans. Through the method of mirroring, by symmetrical human physiological characteristics, the "Plants" will reproduce the human position after opening the fold pages.
Author Bio
Li Yijing, born in 2000, from Taiyuan, Shanxi Province. Uses "Crying in Anguish" as an activity code.
btr: ‘Why Plants? A Human Position’ possesses two qualities that excellent photobooks often have: starting from an unexpected concept and offering a fresh perspective. The concept of this book is almost minimalistic: the right half of each page is folded and hidden. If you don't open it, you'll see a series of tree portraits, different from usual botanical dictionaries, showing the diversity of marks, shape, or texture. However, almost magically, when you unfold each page's right side, the human position appears in the mirrored double-image. In this fresh perspective, unexpected faces, mysterious visages, and even body phantoms emerge. Thus, the action of "opening the pages" gains a developing-like effect, completing the integration and unification of material and medium. This book also responds to Nakahira Takuma’s idea in "Why an Illustrated Botanical Dictionary?" stating, "leaves, sap, and other elements retain elements similar to our flesh," suggesting that plants and humans are both organisms. The author deliberately blurs the boundaries between plants and humans through this minimalist magic.
Zhu Xinyi’s Choice: "Tail Feather" by Jiang Yichen
Author's Statement
The images in "Tail Feather" are seen as quatrains in poetry (blue and white rice paper as the prosody), losing the tiny and small thoughts and habits. With an empty heart, the images are also clear.
Author Bio
Jiang Yichen, a photographer, currently living in Jiangsu. Occasionally, he also makes experimental music.
Zhu Xinyi: "Tail Feather" for me is almost a riddle. The whole book consists of various blurry landscape photos—sea surfaces, deserts, tree shadows—some nearly abstract. Like the author’s unpunctuated self-statement on the title page, it is vague, ambiguous, and carries a bit of mystery. But this ambiguity and vagueness make a seemingly ordinary landscape require a gaze and investigation. Printed on rice paper, the front has one texture, and the thin, translucent back of the rice paper presents another, giving one photo a "two-sided" effect. The title—"Tail Feather"—and the photos seem unrelated, further deepening this ambiguity and vagueness. The book title in brush script on the cover, "Tail Feather," written in yellow paint and black ink, one large and one small, makes one ponder—is this carefully set, or a redo of a miswritten title? The fun of flipping through the book arises in these obstacles set by the author. Additionally, as a book, the soft rice paper combined with the photo grain makes the flipping experience wonderful. I love it!
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