BUP Book Award 2021
Rebecca Topakian won the 2021 BUP Book Award!
The second edition of the BUP Book Award is reaching its final moment - the winner announcement. From over 120 projects submitted to the award this year, jurors selected 20 they considered the most promising in terms of book publication. These shortlisted projects were then analysed by the BLOW UP PRESS publishers, who decided to grant their main prize to the project Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories by Rebecca Topakian.
“For Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories my starting point is the unique story of my Armenian family, who had lived in Turkey before my grandfather emigrated to France,” - one can read in the winning project description. - “This is a love story of my great-grandparents, forbidden by their parents, until Gulizar was kidnapped by Garabed, who came for her on his horse and took her to Constantinople. I explored this part using fiction and Armenian mythology. And when I travelled through and lived in Armenia trying to explore my Armenian identity, the love story of my ancestors, their desire, became a thread of this work.”
“Rebecca's project has everything we are trying to investigate in our books,” - says Grzegorz Kosmala of BLOW UP PRESS. - “It's a thrilling story, derived from the family archive, inscribed in events over which we have no influence. An individual versus the world, although in this case - a seeking her family roots woman versus a conservative, patriarchal society with clearly defined gender-based roles.”
The winning project will be transformed into a book by Aneta Kowalczyk. “I love this project. Rebecca uses different media, from archive pictures, through documentary, landscapes and staged portraits, to photographs printed on stones. Combining them all into one coherent story will be very challenging and I can’t wait to start working with Rebecca on the book.”
Rebecca Topakian (b. 1989) lives and works in Paris, France. She graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie in Arles in 2015. Rebecca has exhibited her works in France and internationally. Her first book, Infra- (Lille: Classe Moyenne Éditions, 2017), was shortlisted for the 2018 Rencontres d’Arles Book Awards in the Author’s Book category. Discover more @ rebeccatopakian.com
2021 BUP Book Award shortlist
The goal of BUP Book Award is to promote a photobook as a form of individual artistic expression, to let the artists speak freely about things they consider important and referring to all of us. Within the award, we are looking for unique photography-based projects, which are intended to become a book.
We are thrilled to announce the finalists for the second edition of BUP Book Award, whose submitted projects were recognised by our jury as the most promising in terms of publishing (in alphabetical order):
- Diego Ballestrasse (Spain) - La cuarta pared / The Fourth Wall
- Olga Cafiero (Switzerland) - Costiss
- Matteo Capone (Italy) - Sin
- Luigi Cecconi (Italy) - Incorrect Theory
- Aliki Christoforou (Belgium) - Anamnesis
- Nathalie Dreier & AnaHell (Switzerland/Germany) - Together a Part: Extending the Physical Through Virtual Interaction
- Katherine Longly (Belgium) - To Tell My Real Intentions, I Want to Eat Only Haze Like a Hermit
- Alisa Martynova (Italy) - Nowhere Near
- Julia Mejnertsen (Denmark) - Petrichor: The Smell of Rain
- Elie Monferier (France) - Insula
- Priscilla Pallante (Italy) - Ciucciuì
- Karol Pałka (Poland) - Edifice
- Mara Sánchez-Renero (Mexico) - Iluikak
- Natalia Saurin (Italy) - I Love You Too Much
- Daniel Seiffert (Germany) - Raufaser
- Ellen Smeets (Belgium) - Happiness Is a Warm Scalpel: Fundamental Methods
- Gabriele Stabile (Italy) - Memoir
- David Steinberg (USA) - Ouroboros
- Rebecca Topakian (France) - Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories
- Peggy Washburn (USA) - Precisely Now
Congratulations to all shortlisted artists!
From this group, our publishers have to choose now the one whose project will become a real book. The winner of the 2021 BUP Book Award will be announced on April 14!
Stay tuned!
Diego Ballestrasse (Spain) - La cuarta pared / The Fourth Wall
Olga Cafiero (Switzerland) - Costiss
Matteo Capone (Italy) - Sin
Luigi Cecconi (Italy) - Incorrect Theory
Aliki Christoforou (Belgium) - Anamnesis
Nathalie Dreier & AnaHell (Switzerland/Germany) - Together a Part: Extending the Physical Through Virtual Interaction
Katherine Longly (Belgium) - To Tell My Real Intentions, I Want to Eat Only Haze Like a Hermit
Alisa Martynova (Italy) - Nowhere Near
Julia Mejnertsen (Denmark) - Petrichor: The Smell of Rain
Elie Monferier (France) - Insula
Priscilla Pallante (Italy) - Ciucciuì
Karol Pałka (Poland) - Edifice
Mara Sánchez-Renero (Mexico) - Iluikak
Natalia Saurin (Italy) - I Love You Too Much
Daniel Seiffert (Germany) - Raufaser
Ellen Smeets (Belgium) - Happiness Is a Warm Scalpel: Fundamental Methods
Gabriele Stabile (Italy) - Memoir
David Steinberg (USA) - Ouroboros
Rebecca Topakian (France) - Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories
Peggy Washburn (USA) - Precisely Now
JURORS
Organiser:
BLOW UP PRESS, publishing house based in Warsaw (Poland), specialising in photo books
Partners:
Arctic Paper S.A., leading European producer of high-quality graphic papers
doc! photo magazine, publication devoted to documentary photography
