Here are the winners:

First prize (4000 EUR) goes to Andreas Frei for his book Hab acht, the runner ups (500 EUR each) are Elisabeth Tonnard with the book In this dark wood and Max Pinckers with his book Margins of excess. Congratulations to the winners. The special mentions are (in random order): Isaac Ruperez Cano – Than nothing, than flowers, Dave Ferrie – Over here over there over, Andreas Frei – Ich war hier, Simone Donati – Hotel imagine, Duccio Doretti – A lit candle lit the following and other coincidences on existence, Eduardo Nave – Like, Nina Berman – An autobiography of Miss Wish, Coskun Asar – Blackout, Gregorz Dembinski – Make love not war, Alexander Chernavskiy – e Bay them all!

Jury statement about the winners:

HAB ACHT

Andreas Frei

The fear of the dark is used symbolically as something we can’t see, explain, or even photograph.
Though Hab Acht (be careful), is a reaction to the Paris attack in 2015, it is a poetic and very personal, metaphorical
work about angst.
Beautifully printed in an edition of 100, the combination of night-time house exteriors and intimate portraits of his family and friends in a sate between sleeping and awake, keep the viewer uncertain until the end, where, with one simple sentence, it all makes sense.

IN THIS DARK WOOD

Elisabeth Tonnard

One classical line from a Dante poem which we all think we understand, slowly becomes re-interpretated so often that the original disappears. When combined with anonymous street portraits of isolated city dwellers walking by the viewer,
unsettled and introverted, Elisabeth Tonnards role in this book is one of a collector and editor, pointing out the impossibility of universal truth.

MARGINS OF EXCESS

Max Pinckers

Told through many stories some more well known than others, Margins of Excess shows how media constructs what is being percived as the truth.
He points at what we know but don’t want to admit; that photography and contemnportray (sometimes sensational) media has long lost its authenticity.
Finding, interviewing and photographing the protagonists behind the original stories, he gives them a chance to show us how much more complex the truth actually is.

Thanks again to everybody who participated. All books will be digitized and then presented on The Angry Bat’s nice photobooks blog in 2018 and 2019. Cheers!

5 members of the jury will take care of the selection process for the Maribor photobook award 2018. All members have a lot of experience in the field of photography and photobooks.