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By Emma Thom on

Paul Salveson is the winner of this year’s First Book Award

Paul Salveson's work, Between the Shell, uses commonplace items and objects within domestic environments to construct absurdist images.

One of the many partnerships and projects we’re involved in is the First Book Award, in partnership with Mack, an independent art and photography publishing house based in London. Now in its second year, the First Book Award supports an emerging photographer by publishing their first book.

This year’s winner is Paul Salveson, whose work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, the Swiss Institute in New York, and Actual Size in LA. His book, Between the Shell, will be published by Mack later this year.

Potato, 2010 © Paul Salveson
Potato, 2010 © Paul Salveson

The winner was announced last night at the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, part of the Sony World Photography Awards.

Salveson’s work was selected by a panel of five judges from 100 international (invited) submissions. The judges were: Michael Mack of Mack; Polly Fleury of the Wilson Centre for Photography, London; Liz Jobey of the FT Weekend Magazine; Greg Hobson, our Curator of Photographs; and photographer Clare Strand.

Emitter, 2009 © Paul Salveson
Emitter, 2009 © Paul Salveson

Taken in New York and Virginia between 2006 and 2011, Paul Salveson’s photographs place commonplace items and objects within domestic environments to construct absurdist images.

Fufu Bone, 2010 © Paul Salveson
Fufu Bone, 2010 © Paul Salveson

Of his work, Salveson says:

Often my photographic process unfolds like a private performance in an empty house, or after everyone falls asleep. My engagement emerges from a perspective that precedes familiarity, disregarding the functions and cultural associations that objects are assigned. I try to process my surroundings with an alien mind.

The winner of the inaugural First Book Award in 2012 was Anne Sophie Merryman, whose book Mrs. Merryman’s Collection presents a series of postcards collected by her grandmother between 1937 and 1980.

Scum Experiment, 2012 © Paul Salveson
Scum Experiment, 2012 © Paul Salveson
Better Cups, 2010 © Paul Salveson
Better Cups, 2010 © Paul Salveson

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