Aperture Foundation, a world-leading non-profit arts institution dedicated to promoting photography in all its forms, is the recipient of two prestigious awards for its acclaimed book program in the summer of 2010.
PHotoEspaña, a celebrated international festival of photography, presented Aperture with its Outstanding Publishing House of the Year award during a ceremony last month at Teatro Español-Nave de Matadero in Madrid. The award recognizes the vital role both the publishing industry and the photobook play in presenting and distributing photography to a worldwide audience.
Aperture was honored in recognition of past year’s publications, including Kamaitachi, by Eikoh Hosoe; Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s, by Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian; Sally Mann: Proud Flesh (copublished with Gagosian Gallery); and Summer Nights, Walking, by Robert Adams (copublished with Yale University Art Gallery).
Rencontres de’Arles, the world’s foremost photography festival, took place earlier this month and awarded Aperture’s Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ’70s, by Ryuichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian, the Historical Book Award, which goes to the best thematic book or monograph published between June 1, 2009, and May 31, 2010. The acclaimed volume presents over forty definitive publications from an era marked by massive upheaval and change in the form, style, content, and function of Japanese photography.
Among the most famous books featured in this unprecedented survey are Eikoh Hosoe’s Man and Woman, Nobuyoshi Araki’s Sentimental Journey, Daido Moriyama’s Japanese Theater, and Shomei Tomatsu’s Nippon. Previously, in April, Kaneko was awarded the 2010 Scholastic Achievement Award from the Photographic Society of Japan for his years of work dedicated to researching Japanese photography and photobooks.
Since its founding in 1952, Aperture has published over five hundred books that comprise one of the most comprehensive and innovative libraries in the history of photography and art. Aperture’s list of artists, ranging from masters to emerging innovators includes: Diane Arbus, Robert Capa, Barbara Crane, Bruce Davidson, Doug DuBois, Paul Fusco, Nan Goldin, Takashi Homma, Eirik Johnson, William Klein, Josef Koudelka, Mary Ellen Mark, Sally Mann, Susan Meiselas, Joel Meyerowitz, Richard Misrach, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Erwin Olaf, Martin Parr, Thomas Ruff, Sebastião Salgado, Stephen Shore, Paul Strand, Jonathan Torgovnik, Alex Webb, and Edward Weston, among others.
Aperture’s sixtieth anniversary programming in 2012 will explore the future of publishing in the digital age, as well as highlighting and championing the unique properties and histories of photography and the photobook form. More details about Aperture’s plans to celebrate its sixtieth birthday will be announced in the coming months.
