The jury for this year’s book awards includes:
• Katerina Gregos (Artistic Director, National Museum of Contemporary Art, EMST)
• Marta Weiss (Lead Curator, Photography, Victoria and Albert Museum)
• Joan Fontcuberta (artist and writer)
• Katy Hundertmark (Managing Editor & Curator, Foam Magazine / Foam)
• Cécile Sayuri Poimboeuf-Koizumi (publisher, Chose Commune; jury member for the Dummy Award only)
• Sylvia Sachini (curator, APhF Book Program)
For its 2026 edition, Athens Photo Festival is pleased to present its Book Program (APhF BP), curated by Sylvia Sachini. Structured around three key pillars—the APhF Dummy Award feat. Chose Commune, the APhF Pick:26 Book Award, and the Unfolded Chapters exhibition—the program offers a focused platform for engaging with contemporary photobook practices. Online submissions from artists and publishers worldwide are open until 28 April 2026, while physical copies must be postmarked no later than 30 April 2026.
APhF Dummy Award feat. Chose Commune
The APhF Dummy Award feat. Chose Commune is a juried competition open to unpublished photobook dummies by artists worldwide. One project will be selected as the winner and will receive a publishing contract with the publishing house Chose Commune. The winning project will be supported by a budget of up to €15,000, covering book editing and design, printing and binding, print production supervision, copyediting and proofreading, promotion, advertising, and distribution. In addition, 10 photobooks will be featured in the APhF:26 print catalog, while 20 shortlisted photobooks will be exhibited at the Benaki Museum / Pireos 138 during APhF:26 in Athens, from 10 June to 26 July 2026. All shortlisted photobooks will also be available at the APhF Library.
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APhF Pick:26 Book Award
The APhF Pick:26 Book Award is an annual juried competition open to all photobooks worldwide that were produced or published between January 2025 and March 2026. For this competition, οne artist will be presented with the APhF Pick:26 Book Award along with a €2,000 cash prize. In addition, 10 photobooks will be featured in the APhF:26 print catalog, 20 photobooks will be shortlisted and exhibited at the Benaki Museum / Pireos 138 during APhF:26 in Athens, from 10 June to 26 July 2026. All photobooks will be available at the APhF Library.
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Unfolded Chapters Exhibition
Unfolded Chapters is our annual celebration of photobooks, conceived as a curated group exhibition. Each year, we select a book from which we draw both the exhibition title and its thematic framework, inviting artists and publishers to engage in dialogue with its ideas. This approach stems from our ongoing interest in revisiting seminal publications and reactivating them within a contemporary context.
For its 2026 edition, the exhibition is titled The Photography of Nature & The Nature of Photography, taking its name from the book by Joan Fontcuberta, whose work critically examines the relationship between image, knowledge, and truth.