PHOTOGRAPHY2023SpecialCategory

The special category of BRAW 2023 shines a light on photography, to take stock of the extent to which photography is an integral part of children’s books throughout the world. This new Special Section of the BolognaRagazziAward will provide a 10-year overview of publications featuring photography, including re-prints of classical works. To judge this special category, BCBF has appointed a committee composed of renowned photography and children’s books experts

Photography The Winner

SEEN AND UNSEEN: WHAT DOROTHEA LANGE, TOYO MIYATAKE, AND ANSEL ADAMS’S PHOTOGRAPHS REVEAL ABOUT THE JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION

CHRONICLE BOOKS

USA

TEXT BY ELIZABETH PARTRIDGE

IMAGES BY LAUREN TAMAKI

MEMBERS OF THE 2023 JURY

WALTER GUADAGNINI DIRECTOR OF CAMERA – CENTRO ITALIANO PER LA FOTOGRAFIA (ITALY)

LAURENCE LE GUEN AUTHOR OF A THESIS ON PHOTOLITTERATURE FOR CHILDREN, EXHIBITION CURATOR AND RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE CELLAM LABORATORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF RENNES 2 AND AT KU LEUVEN (FRANCE)

JUNKO YOKOTA

PROFESSOR EMERITUS AT NATIONAL LOUIS UNIVERSITY AND DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER FOR TEACHING THROUGH CHILDREN’S BOOKS (USA)

WHAT THE JURY SAID

The jury selected this book for the ways in which photography plays a seminal role in telling this story. Through expository texts, thought-provoking questions, documents, photographs, and original illustrations, readers are offered a complex set of ways to make sense of what happened in the camp. Three photographers’ works offer differing perspectives: Lange, through her lens of protest of the incarceration, Miyatake, through his hidden camera and an insider perspective as a Japanese American, and Adams, through his landscape photography and focus on the loyalty of the Japanese Americans as US citizens. This book pays homage to the power of photography in documenting and revealing circumstances that were kept impounded and hidden from public view during the war.

PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIAL MENTION

QUI VEUT JOUER AVEC MOI?

ÉDITIONS DES GRANDES PERSONNES

FRANCE

TEXT AND IMAGES BY CLAIRE DÉ

WHAT THE JURY SAID

This child-centric book invites young readers to turn the pages of a summer of dreams. Through beautiful graphic images, the artist plays with distances: showing the overall as well as closeups, the focused as well as the blurred. Her characters are dressed with primary-colored stripes and polka dots, stripes and checks. The photographs are full of signs to be deciphered, and of references to other famous stories.

PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIAL MENTION

CACHE-CACHE CAUCHEMARS

ÉDITIONS THIERRY MAGNIER

FRANCE

TEXT AND IMAGES BY JEAN LECOINTRE

WHAT THE JURY SAID

The artist offers a very contemporary version of photomontage technique with his scanned, cut, assembled, and then digitally-coloured images. He plays with the ambiguous relationship that photography has with reality by transforming domestic environments into places of nightmare. In so doing Lecointre reveals the theater that is in the child’s mind whenever playing or dreaming, and transforms children’s fears into moments of humor.

PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIAL MENTION

O Adeus Do Marujo

PALLAS EDITORA

BRAZIL

TEXT AND IMAGES BY FLÁVIA BOMFIM

WHAT THE JURY SAID

The blue color used in this book is reminiscent of early cyanotype printing techniques. The photographs are printed on linen, and ornamental stitching elements embellish and add another level of interpretation to the narrative. The embroidery references the protagonist’s stitching while imprisoned for revolting against the mistreatment of sailors in Brazil. Mixing media is typical of contemporary artistic and photographic languages. In this way, the author weaves the story of a life from the past to the present.