Paris Photo Photo Book Award: Photographic Storytelling

The 25th edition of the world's largest photography fair will take place in Paris from November 10th to 13th.

In addition to artistic works at the stands of almost 200 galleries, unique editions and extraordinary book publications will be presented in the book sector.

Since 2012, the PhotoBook Award has honored outstanding publications from the past year in three categories.

All shortlisted books will be exhibited at the fair.

Marie Haefner

picture editor.

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The photographer

, born in Turkey in 1986, accompanied Koran students in five Turkish cities over a period of three years

for her first photo book

The eponymous term

refers to those students who manage to memorize the entire Koran.

Intimate portraits provide an extraordinary insight into the everyday life of the young women.

Ukrainian artist

is shortlisted with two books this year.

Published by Départ Pour l'Image, the title of the book

is an acronym for Україна, the Slavic word for 'Ukraine', followed by the name of the Kyiv-born artist.

As in a daydream unfolding backwards, Yemchuk assembles photographs, drawings and archive material in three chapters.

Starting with the last chapter, she lets us share memories of her childhood and home through photographs, drawings and archive material.

The second work is dedicated to the Ukrainian city of Odessa, which Yelena Yemchuk has perceived since childhood as a place full of contradictions.

In 2015, one year after Russia illegally annexed Crimea, she began to portray the residents of Odessa.

Initially it was limited to young women and men at the military academy.

Over the years she expanded the project on which she worked until 2019.

In 2005 and 2006, American photographer

visited Ukraine as part of a long-term project on emigration.

Some of the photographs taken there have now appeared

in the publication

The proceeds benefit the Ukrainian aid organization Voices of Children.

In

,

traces adoptive families' journeys to China and thus their own fate.

As a result of the one-child policy, she herself was one of the girls separated from their families and put up for adoption.

has been photographing

in the Appalachian Mountains, a mountain range in eastern North America, for twelve years.

Once a coal mining area, many towns have struggled with unemployment, structural weaknesses and the opioid crisis since the industrial decline.

Rather than reinforcing the stereotyped narrative of Appalachia as a region plagued solely by poverty, or offsetting it by selectively emphasizing positive aspects of the place, the photographer strives to create new narratives.

Flint is Family in Three Acts

, a work by American photographer and video artist

, documents the 2014-2019 water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Based on a commissioned work on lead pollution and its effects on urban infrastructure, she developed a long-term project, collaborating with poet and activist Shea Cobb for five years.

In addition to documenting the stories of Flint residents, Frazier developed concrete solutions for providing clean and safe drinking water.

In this way, she continues the tradition of politically engaged documentary photography that actively deals with questions of social injustice.

In 1998,

was only five years old when her father was found murdered in his car.

In 2015, she decided to process what happened and began to reconstruct his life and death.

In the family home she found, among other things, a notebook with

The photographer's father set himself eight rules to better resolve conflicts.

The title

is indicative of

's way of working .

The monograph takes a journey through the French photographer's 15 years of editorial and freelance work.

The book arose primarily from the desire to rethink his work at the interface of fashion and music.