Book Awards 2025

The Author's Book Award, the Historical Book Award and the Photo-Text Book Award award are endowed with €6,000 each and rewards a photographic work published between May 13, 2024 and May 12, 2025 (included).

Overview

Created to support the extraordinary development of photographic publishing and to contribute to its wider dissemination, the Book Awards of Les Rencontres d'Arles reward three categories of works: the Author's Book Award, the Historical Book Award and the Photo-Text Book Award, supported and encouraged by the Fondation Jan Michalski pour l’écriture et la littérature, which celebrates the relationship between texts and images.

Practical Info

The award is open to all professional photographers and artists using photography of all ages and nationalities. The book must have been published between May 13, 2024 and May 12, 2025 (included). Reissues of artists' books are allowed, as long as the first print run was less than 150 copies. It is possible to present several works, through separate and duly completed applications. Self-published books (without an ISBN number) that have not yet been distributed are eligible. The project must be submitted both physically and online. Each book sent will become the property of Les Rencontres, which reserves its use, and cannot be returned.

The Author's Book Award will examine the practice of a photographic artist. They can develop more subjective ideas, which will follow their personal creative process. The Historical Book Award focuses on the process of documentation or archiving, around a historical subject. It can be a collective or personal story, an artistic figure, a movement or a current. It is close to the retrospective form or that of the survey. The Photo-Text Book Award focuses on the relationship between textual material and image. This category can be more experimental and open to new proposals.

Each award is endowed with €6,000 and rewards a photographic work published between May 13, 2024 and May 12, 2025 (included). As soon as the prizes are awarded, half of the prize money is paid to the publisher, and half to the artist (or to all the authors in the case of a collaborative work).

A pre-selection followed by the designation of the winning works is established by a pre-jury and a jury composed of experts in the field of photographic books. The final jury will meet on the eve of the festival's opening week and will officially announce the winners during the evening at the Antique theater on Tuesday, July 8th 2025. The shortlisted and winning books will then be exhibited throughout the festival in a dedicated exhibition space. Candidates will be asked to send a second copy, which will not be returned too, that may enter the archives of Les Rencontres d'Arles, in the library of l’École nationale supérieure de la photographie d'Arles.

About Les Rencontres d’Arles

Every summer since 1970, over the course of more than forty exhibitions at various of the city's heritage sites, the Rencontres d'Arles has been a major influence in disseminating the best of world photography and playing the role of a springboard for photographic and contemporary creative talents.