PHOTOBOOK 2017 is an annual competition open to photographers in the United States and abroad who have self-published a photobook. This competition was offered by Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson NY for the eighth year. The competition results were exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery and forty two books are now traveling to the Griffin Museum of Photography. Karen Davis, co-director of the Davis Orton Gallery in Hudson, NY and Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography were the jurors for Photobook 2017.

8^th Annual Photobook Exhibition 2017 is featured in the Main Gallery at the Griffin Museum March 8 – April 1, 2018. An opening reception with the artists takes place on March 8, 7 – 8:30 p.m.

An informal gallery talk by Wendi Schneider will take place on March 8 at 6:15 PM

For the 8th Annual Photobook Exhibition, jurors Karen Davis and Paula Tognarelli chose 42 Photobooks to be exhibited at the Griffin Museum are:
Ave Pildas — People on Stars
Bill Westheimer — Momento – Capturing Moments and Memories
Bruce Morton — Forgottonia – The Audience
Catharine Carter — Journey
Charlie     Lemay — Seeing
Deena Feinberg — Finding Myself in the Mornings
Eliot Dudik and Jared Ragland — Or Give Me Death 2016
Ellen Kok — Cadets
Ellen Feldman — We Who March: Photographs and Reflections
on the Women’s March, January 21, 2017
Irene Imfeld — Zone of Transformation: Nature in the High Desert
Jaye Phillips — Clay Fire
Jeff Evans — Seeing Double
— Palindrome
Kay Kenny — Dreamland Speaks: Three Romantic Novels
Lawrence Schwartzwald — Reading New York
Linda Morrow — Blue Mandala
Lydia Harris — The Fool’s Reach
— A View of Collier Heights
Marcy Juran — Saltmarsh Seasons
Mark Farber — North Truro Air Force Station
Mark Peterman — Some Days We Caught Rainbows
— The Things That Affect Our Lives Everyday
Matthew Crowther — The Lonely Hunter
Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh — Meditations
Mike Callaghan — you are all of this except for
Michael Hunold — All We See
Nancy Edelstein — Friday Night Dinners
Nancy Baron — Beautiful Trailer Town
Nancy Oliveri — Gowanus
Nat Raum — What Are You Looking At?
Negar Latifian — O-AB+B+A-B-O+A+AB-
Patrick Cicalo — L’Image Trouvee
Phillip Buehler — (UN)THINKABLE
Robert Dash — On an Acre Shy of Eternity
Robert Pacheco — People Under My Eyelids
Shawn Bush —  A Golden State
Silke Hase — Traumbilder with Tristan Stull
Tara Wray — Come Again When You Can’t Stay So Long
Thomas Pickarski — Adventures of Otto, a Tiny Toy Dinosaur
William Ash — Tsukiji – Tokyo Fish Market Suite
Walter Phillips — Being at peace, making a pie
Yelena Zhavoronkova — Memories in Red

View Davis Orton Gallery website:

View online catalog

There are growing options available for self-publishing a book such as on-demand (blurb, lulu, viovio, iphoto, etc.); small run offset or web printing/publishing firms, binderies. For the competition if photobooks submitted had been hand-made/bound, they had to be available in multiples of at least 25. Entrants could submit up to three different titles that are self-published photography books of any size, format, or style: hard cover, soft cover, case-wraps, landscape, portrait, square, color, black and white. Submissions were judged on the basis of: cover design, strength of the photography, subject matter of the book, page layouts, editing and sequencing and emotional impact of the overall book. All Submissions had to be original works of authorship created by the photographer who submitted the book.

“A photobook relies on the image to form visual sentences,” says Paula Tognarelli, executive director and curator of the Griffin Museum of Photography. “A photobook that is produced well can transport us in time and place just as any book produced with the written word.”