2026 Art & Photo Book Award

Open for submissions

We want to give a massive shoutout to Bookmobile, who have supported this award from the start. Independently owned and based in Minneapolis, Bookmobile has been helping bring books to life for decades through design, printing, and distribution services. You can learn more about them here.

Now, let’s take a look back at all the magnificent books and zines we’ve helped bring to life.

To Remember is based around Caleb Thal’s memories. Printed, re-photographed, and altered, each image is reimagined by Thal as a way of tracing how photographs change long after they are first seen. “As a child I spent a lot of time looking at old photographs of myself and my family as we grew up. As I am older I find myself remembering events of my childhood more centred on the photograph as opposed to the actual event.”

Purchase the book from Caleb’s Website

i’m here & i love you is an interdisciplinary book that documents Kyoko Takenaka’s year navigating a Stage 3B Hodgkin Lymphoma diagnosis through photography, interviews, and guiding questions. All images and words were created during their treatment and recovery, ranging from portraits taken during their chemotherapy infusion sessions to photographs captured in the forests of Yakushima Island one week after their port removal surgery. This body of work weaves together themes of illness, diaspora, imagination, and healing through nature and community.

Froot Loops features Matthew Walton’s mixed-media-work-on-paper series highlighting the quiet charm of everyday queerness. Each piece reimagines a separate mundane moment, transformed by Walton’s bold, graphic approach to figuration and his vibrant technicolor lens. These vignettes invite viewers into intimate, relatable scenes that blur the line between public and private space. It is within this liminal realm that Walton’s camp and Cubist-coded figures live – uninhibited; a world all its own, where everyone is welcome to step inside.

Purchase the book from Matthew’s Website

Limpid Blue by Olly Geary. Created during a month-long trip to San José, Costa Rica, Limpid Blue emerged from a desire to reconnect with his mother’s homeland. In Costa Rica many streets bear no official names or numbers. Addresses are often found by anecdotes and directions passed down through generations. Navigating the city becomes an act of translation, a system that endures even as the physical landscape shifts and technology advances. Working within this framework, Geary began each day from a familiar landmark, allowing curiosity to guide his route. Photographing the scenes he encountered, gradually he began to form a photographic map shaped by the rhythms of San José. In this series, photographs are interwoven with directions shared by his family during his stay. Together, these elements chart both the topography of the city and Geary’s own orientation with his familial history.

In Move Like Water, Still Like Rock, Minhan Lin approaches rocks as records of movement and transformation. Beneath their apparent stillness lie the forces of water, wind, gravity, and pressure. To observe a rock is to look past its surface and imagine the unseen energies that shaped it.

Pomegranates by João Lutz is a visual and written response to the resurfacing of a childhood memory of sexual abuse—an experience long buried. The project began shortly after the memory returned and unfolded in real time through photography, poetry, and moments of stillness. The book does not follow a linear narrative. Instead, it moves like memory: fragmented, uncertain, and intimate. It is a work about remembering, about naming what was hidden, and about what it means to continue forward while holding both silence and truth.

it’s all very interesting what is happening by Angelo Dolojan is a zine featuring drawings created over the course of a year. The work weaves together observation, memory, dreams, documentation, and manifestation into a continuous visual exploration.

Dearest by Zeinab Diomande is a zine presenting a collection of paintings that, while not a formal series, share a cohesive visual language exploring themes of liquidity and the passage of time, achieved through the use of thinned paint and water. The pieces employ texture as a storytelling device, reflecting the rituals and ceremonies of the artist’s alter egos within imagined worlds.

Traumstadt by Grace Dodds is a zine featuring 28 black-and-white images created within the post-documentary tradition. Carefully edited and arranged, the series offers a tender and unobtrusive portrait of Berlin street life. The work employs a meandering, gentle gaze that amplifies the subtle connections between people and places. The project draws inspiration from Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, which is set in the same city.

Manda Quevedo is a queer nonbinary Latinx photographer, bookmaker, and fine art printer. Their book, Love Letter To Death Match, explores the captivating world of deathmatch wrestling. “The wrestling community intersects in so many ways with the queer community, punk music, and performance art like go-go and burlesque dancing. It’s my favorite place to be. I love capturing the main action-packed moments, along with quieter and brief fleeting moments of beauty within these performances”.

Place by Place is a charming little photo book by Taylor Naoko (photographer, designer) and CJ Tuff (writer), perfectly capturing the essence of Kissaten – traditional Japanese coffee shops. Highlighting 7 individual kissaten, the project is a tribute to the influence of the Shōwa Era, and its aesthetic, on coffee culture in Japan. The photos and writing draw attention to architectural details, interior, location, and personalities of the respective cafes.

Available for purchase: Place by Place

Cleo Peng is an emerging Chinese artist and illustrator, whose career began during the pandemic, after graduating from The New School in 2020. In her book, Can you ____ me?, Peng examines the relationship of humans, the city, and nature.

Available for purchase: Can you ____ me?

In in his book, Fushintexme, artist Kevin Hopkins explores nostalgia and identity through an examination of his childhood aspirations. Our favourite works are the body pillow paintings which are cut out of canvas and sewn into a three-dimensional forms filled with stuffing. “In my youth and times of difficulty I dreamt of what it would be like to be one of the cartoon characters I consumed. I wondered what it would be like to be a person of importance; born with a unique gift that makes their lives significant.”

Adri Tan is a queer, non-binary Malaysian-Chinese American photographer, born and raised in Minnesota and living in New York. Wa Leng Wa Hor is a deeply personal tribute to their late grandmother Chong Ah Chin who was diagnosed with vascular dementia in 2015 and passed away in July 2023. “Through this work, I contend with the grief of forgetting in all of its tenses. How do you grieve for someone who is still alive, and what parts of a culture die with one person?”

Available for purchase: Wa Leng Wa Hor

Blue Mood (Al Mar) by Sander Coers reflects on the challenges of growing up, the search for self-acceptance, and the vulnerability of adolescent men. Some really striking photos and ya gotta love the translucent dust jacket.

Omote (面) by Miya Turnbull documents a collaborative project by three Canadian artists: Miya Turnbull (visual artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia), Shion Skye Carter (dance artist based in Vancouver, British Columbia), and Nanne Springer (photographer based in Montréal, Québec). These photos of Shion and Miya were captured by Nanne in April 2023 at the 206 Studio and Arts Hub, located in Montréal, Québec, during the premiere of their live performance of Omote (面).

10/27/03 by Ashley A. Ross utilizes portraiture and personal familial memorabilia to explore themes of indoctrination and identity within the confines of a religious upbringing. The title is a date taken from a certificate given to the artist during childhood, following their baptism. This body of work calls to question who gets to constitute the spiritual value of a Black adolescent and how growing up with stringent belief systems can influence how one’s identity is formed.

Displacement by Jeremy Starn contains 80 black and white images of the building of Ceiba, a 150′ foot wooden tall ship. Currently being built on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, the goal of the project is to provide zero emission cargo freight shipping between the Americas using traditional sailing practices. The shipyard and vessel were built by a committed and passionate group of traditional boat builders and creatives. This photo book shares the building of the ship and the life of the builders.

Complex of the Soul by Barbara Gabrielle seeks to deconstruct stereotypes associated with Brazil. Carnival and football are usually among the few things foreigners recognize as positive aspects when discussing Brazilian culture, while favelas are frequently associated with violence. Gabrielle says she wanted to show the “other side of the coin.” This book tells the story of Faiska and Fumassa, who were born and raised in the peripheral community known as the “Complexo da Alma,” where they still reside. Their desire is to change misconceptions often associated with marginalized communities, and this book aims to advance them toward this goal.

A Few Views is an exploration of shared experiences from the mind of artist Sheida Shekarian. Love the decision she made to include isolated sections of her work alongside the full images as each is packed with so many playful details.

Lindsay Ellary’s Chin Up Baby, Smile is a striking collection of portraits offering an intimate perspective of female youth. Ellary says, “The disconnect between the easy innocence of the subjects and the calculated tone of the imagery is intentional”.

In Drill Team, Lawrence Agyei pays tribute to South Shore Drill Team, a performance arts band based in Chicago’s south side that empowers marginalized youth. “The rituals that bind them in drill are stronger than the social pressures that would divide them on the streets in a city with a history of violence and crime”.

Nowhere to Now spans the eight years Tom DesLongchamp has spent developing his unique fingerprint/ink printmaking process. It’s beautiful to see the evolution of DesLongchamp’s mark-making through each portrait.

Francisco Gonzalez Camacho produced the spectacular images for Elsewhere using a digital camera modified for infrared photography. Camacho describes his photography as “an instrument through which I can reveal not only the nature that encloses me, but the nature that reflects the landscape within”.

If you have work that you want to turn into a book or zine, we want to see it. The 2026 Booooooom Art & Photo Book Award closes soon. Learn more and submit here.