The cover of David Galjaard’s Concresco, which won the First PhotoBook Prize. © David Galjaard.

Paris Photo and the Aperture Foundation announced the winners of the first annual Paris Photo Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards today.

The First PhotoBook Award went to Dutch photographer David Galjaard for his self-published book Concresco, about the remaining cold-war-era bunkers that dot the Albanian landscape. Open to all new bookmakers, the award includes a $10,000 prize.

An interior spread from Galjaard’s Concresco. © David Galjaard.

The PhotoBook of the Year award went to Anders Peterson for his City Diary (Volumes 1-3), which were designed by Greger Ulf Nilson and published by Steidl, and which depict the gritty sides of St. Petersburg, Stockholm and Tokyo.

The cover of Vol. 1 of Anders Petersen’s City Diary, which was named PhotoBook of the Year. © Anders Petersen, published by Steidl.

In the fall edition of Aperture’s Photobook Review, which announced the shortlisted books, the descriptions of the two eventual winners highlighted not only the content of the images, but the quality of the bookmaking.

“Concresco is a consistently and elegantly rendered physical object,” the short review pointed out. “This three-volume set of soft-cover paperbacks with gatefold-like flaps is densely printed on every surface,” a review noted of Petersen’s City Diary. “The ink fumes that emanate from the rough-cardboard envelope that acts as packaging are fittingly as strong and musky as the photographs themselves.”

The envelope packaging of Petersen’s City Diary. © Anders Petersen, published by Steidl.

The prizes were awarded by a jury that included Roxana Marcoci, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Thomas Seelig, curator and curator of collections at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland; Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography and the department of prints and drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Els Barents, director of the Huis Marseille Museum for Photography; and Timothy Prus, curator of AMC Books, selected the winners for both prizes.

All of the 30 books shortlisted for these prizes will be exhibited at Aperture in New York and will then tour to colleges, libraries and public exhibition space. To review the full shortlist visit The PhotoBook Review site here.

Peter van Agtmael has been named the winner of the 2012 W. Eugene Smith Fund Grant in Humanistic Photography. Van Agtmael, a Brooklyn, New York photographer represented by Magnum Photos, plans to use the grant to work on “Disco Night September 11.” The project will explore the lives of people affected by the American-lead wars that followed the terrorist attacks of September 11, including people in Afghanistan and Iraq, and refugees in the U.S., Europe, and especially other countries in the Middle East. The grant was announced at a ceremony in New York, October 17.

Massimo Berruti of Italy received the $5,000 W. Eugene Smith Fellowship for his project, The Dusty Path, which looks at violence and political corruption in Pakistan.

Jury chair Lauren Wendle, president and publisher of Photo District News (a Smith Fund board member), Kira Pollack, director of photography at Time, and writer and curator Susan Bright selected the grant and fellowship winners from entries received from more than 43 countries.

For more on the finalists for the W. Eugene Smith Grant and the winner of the Howard Chapnick Grant, see our news story on PDNOnline.

Photo: © Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos. Caption: Pech Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2007. “A number of strays hung around Patrol Base California, waiting for food and company. Usually the soldiers welcomed them. But I was told that a few weeks earlier, when one of the dogs urinated on a soldier’s cot, he and his buddies shot the dog to pieces.”

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A rebel fighter plays guitar during a gunfight in Syrte, Libya. © 2011 – Libya – AFP / Aris Messinis

AFP photographer Aris Messinis won the Photo Trophy at this year’s Prix Bayeux-Calvados des Correspondants de Guerre, a festival held in Bayeux, France, that focuses on war reporting. The 7,000-euro prize, sponsored by Nikon, was awarded to Messinis last week for his coverage of the Battle of Sirte in Libya.

Messinis has been with the AFP since 2003, and is currently the chief photographer for the agency’s photo department in Athens. He covered the Arab Spring in Libya and Egypt and exhibited work in the 2012 Visa pour l’Image International Festival of Photojournalism.

Other photographers honored during the week-long event were Ed Ou of Reportage by Getty Images, who won the Young Reporter Prize for his work on the Egyptian revolution; and Manu Brabo of the Associated Press, who won The Public Prize for his images of the Libyan revolution. They each received a 3,000-euro prize; CAPA Television sponsored Ou’s prize and the Town of Bayeux sponsored Brabo’s.

The Bayeux-Calvados Award of War Correspondents, which began in 1994, awarded a total of ten prizes to journalists reporting on “a conflict situation or its impact on civilians, or news stories involving the defense of freedom and democracy.” Award categories included print, television, radio, photographic and online reporting. This year, 54 reports were submitted for consideration. Magnum photographer Gilles Peress served as the president of the 46-person jury. Notable jurors included photographers Karim Ben Khelifa, Jérôme Delay (AP) and Laurent Van der Stockt (Getty Images); Régis Le Sommier of Paris Match; Patrick Baz of AFP; Philippe le Barillier of La Presse de la Manche; and Thierry Oberle of Le Figaro.

“Ambush, Ramadi, 22 July 2006,” by Luc Delahaye.

French photojournalist-turned-artist Luc Delahaye has won the fourth Prix Pictet, the organization announced in a ceremony this evening at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The theme of this year’s prize was “Power.”

Founded by Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie in 2008, the Prix Pictet is awarded to photographers whose work engages with themes of sustainability.

180 experts from around the world nominated 673 artists for the prize. From those the jury selected 12 shortlisted artists, all of whom will be included in an exhibition opening tomorrow, October 10, at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The exhibition will also tour internationally.

Delahaye submitted a portfolio titled “Various works: 2008-2011,” about which he wrote in his artist’s statement:

“I try to put myself in situations that I feel have a certain relevance regarding what we call a shared destiny. The reality I’m interested in is that of people who struggle to act upon it as much as they are subject to it. I sometimes work where power presents itself as a spectacle, as an event produced for or with the media, and my pictures may then take an ironic undertone. But I photograph the ordinary man more often than the leader. I usually stay at the distance where the human relationships are visible, multiple, active and where they remain problematic. I’m interested in narration and in photography’s phenomenological hold on the real.”

Among the other shortlisted photographers were Robert Adams, Rena Effendi, An-My Lê, who just received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, and Joel Sternfeld.

Pictet & Cie, the company that founded the prize, also awarded a commission to nominated photographer Simon Norfolk to travel to and photograph a region where the Bank is supporting a sustainability project.

Previous Prix Pictet winners include Mitch Epstein, Nadav Kander and Benoit Aquin.

Related: Prix Pictet Announces 12 Photographers Shortlisted for Prize

World Press Photo and Human Rights Watch have announced the call for applications for the second annual Tim Hetherington Grant, named for the photojournalist who was killed by a rocket attack in Libya in April, 2011. The €20,000 ($26,000) grant supports photographers who are working to complete a human rights-themed photographic project.

The grant not only bears Hetherington’s name, it also utilizes as its criteria the ideas and characteristics that defined the late photographer’s work: “Work that operates on multiple platforms and in a variety of formats; that crosses boundaries between breaking news and longer-term investigation; and that demonstrates a consistent moral commitment to the lives and stories of the photographic subjects.”

The inaugural Tim Hetherington Grant was awarded to Stephen Ferry for his project “’Violentology: A Manual of the Colombian Conflict,” which focuses on the history and current dynamics of the war in Colombia, while exposing the role of the distinct parties in the conflict.

The selection committee for the 2012 grant includes:

Marcus Bleasdale, documentary photographer VII Photo Agency; Carroll Bogert, deputy executive director for external relations Human Rights Watch; James Brabazon, journalist and documentary filmmaker; Whitney C. Johnson, director of photography The New Yorker; and Michiel Munneke, managing director World Press Photo. Adriaan Monshouwer, the founder of Picture Inside, will serve as the selection committee secretary.

The deadline for applications is November 15. The recipient will be announced in early December.

For more information and to apply visit: http://www.worldpressphoto.org/2012-tim-hetherington-grant

Photographers An-My Lê and Uta Barth are among the 23 artists, scientists, social scientists and scholars named MacArthur Fellows for 2012. Commonly called the “genius” grant, the fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation awards $500,000 over the course of five years to people who have made outstanding achievements in their field. There is no application process, nominations are secret, and recipients can do as they please with the “unrestricted” grant.

Lê, 52, who was born in Saigon and now teaches at Bard College, is best known for her series “Small Wars,” about amateur battle reenactments and simulated battles used to train soldiers.

Conceptual photographer Uta Barth, 54, creates atmospheric images that use blur and light to explore perception. Last year the Art Institute of Chicago exhibited her latest series, titled “…and to draw a bright white line with light.”

Photographers who have won past MacArthur Fellowships include Robert Adams (1994), Susan Meiselas (1992), Faizal Sheikh (2005) and Lynsey Addario (2009).

The W. Eugene Smith Fund will announce the winner of its 33rd annual W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography and the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism at a ceremony on October 17 in New York City. The Fund has extended an open invitation to attend the event.

The program will include presentations of photo essays by this year’s grant recipient and fellowship winners, a tribute to the work of W. Eugene Smith, an announcement of the grant finalists and the presentation  of the 2012 jurors’ discretionary grant.

The keynote speech will be given by Kimberly Dozier, correspondent for AP and author of Breaking the Fire.

The ceremony takes place at 7pm (doors open at 6:30) at the School of Visual Arts Theatre in New York. For details on the ceremony, the Smith Grant and Howard Chapnick Grant, visit the Smith Fund blog: http://smithfund.org/blog

© Kosuke Okahara

Photojournalists Bharat Choudhary, Kosuke Okahara, Paolo Marchetti and Sebastian Liste have been named the winners of Getty Images’ 2012 Grants for Editorial Photography. They will each receive $20,000 to support ongoing documentary projects.  Getty Images also announced it was awarding a grant of $20,000 to the Chris Hondros Fund. Created in memory of photographer Chris Hondros, who was killed in Libya in April 2011, the non-profit Chris Hondros Fund seeks to raise awareness of issues facing those who report from conflict zones and to support photojournalists through grants and scholarships.

The Getty Images Grants for Editorial Photography have been awarded annually since 2005. The mission of the grants is “to enable emerging and established photojournalists to pursue projects of personal and editorial merit, focusing attention on significant social and cultural issues.” Photographers do not have to be affiliated with Getty Images to be considered.

Among this year’s winners are photographers who plan to use a variety of media in their projects:

Bharat Choudhary has spent two years documenting the lives of young Muslims in America and Great Britain in his series “The Silence of Others.” He next plans to document the experience of Muslim youth in France.

Kosuke Okahara’s “Fragments/Fukishima” looks at the devastation wrought by the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power in Japan in March 2011. Kosuke says his two goals now are to “to try and identify what this disaster truly means to the world through imagery and audio interviews. The second is to collect the fragments of Fukushima for future generations.”

Paolo Marchetti’s “FEVER-The Awakening of European Fascism” looks at the growing number of followers of the extreme right in Europe. He plans to use the grant to document this issue in the UK, France, Spain and Hungary.

Sebastian Liste’s “The Brazilian Far West” looks at inequities in Brazil, where 4 percent of landowners control 80 percent of the arable land. Liste, who was selected for PDN’s 30 this year, plans to use his grant to “create a multimedia map of the origin of inequality and violence in Brazil through photography, video and interviews.”

The judges for the 2012 grants were:  Whitney Johnson, Director of Photography, The New Yorker; Kira Pollack, Director of Photography, TIME Magazine; Jean-Francois Leroy, Director, Visa Pour l’Image;  Barbara Griffin, Senior Vice President of Image Management, Turner Broadcasting Systems and Stephanie Sinclair, Photographer, VII.

More information on the Getty editorial grants can be found on the Getty Images web site.

* Photo, above: Police officers at a checkpoint in the town of Namie, which is 27km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power point. © Kosuke Okahara.

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Adrian Fussell, a New York City-based photojournalist, 23, has won the Ian Parry Scholarship for 2012 for his project “My Name is Victory.” The series follows members of the Patriot Guards, from Francis Lewis High School in Queens, NY, a community of immigrant youth who assimilate through participating in the volunteer military program. The award, which comes with a 3,500 British pounds cash prize, was announced this evening at the Visa Pour L’Image Festival in Perpignan, France. Two other finalists were also honored. Photographer Marcelo Pérez del Carpio of Bolivia was named “highly commended” and Hilde Mesics Kleven of Norway was “commended.”

In addition to receiving a cash prize, Fussell is automatically added to the list of finalists for the Joop Swart Masterclass, organized by World Press Photo in Amsterdam. Fussell and the two commended finalists will also have their work shown in the Spectrum supplement to The Sunday Times of London and in a print exhibition to be displayed for two weeks, starting September 26, at the ad agency MOTHER in London.

The scholarship was created in memory of Ian Parry, a photojournalist who died while on assignment for The Sunday Times in 1989. It honors young photographers who are either currently enrolled in a full-time photography class or are under the age of 24, to help them receive support and launch their careers. Fussell is a graduate of New York University, and also studied at the International Center of Photography.

For more on the Ian Parry Scholarship and this year’s finalists, visit the Ian Parry Scholarship Web site.

Photo: © Adrian Fussell. Cadet Jenny Chen, foreground, orders her squad to march during a practice run for the Patriot Guard drill team on March 29, 2012, days before competing in the JROTC Army National Championships in Louisville, KY.

Tim Matsui submitted the photo above, showing a young woman in Cambodia who was being sold for sex by her mother, as part of his award-winning proposal. © Tim Matsui

The first Women’s Initiative grant from Alexia Foundation was awarded to Tim Matsui, who will use the $25,000 to document the sex trafficking of minors in Seattle and King County, Washington. According to James Dooley, executive administrator of the Alexia Foundation, “Matsui’s proposal highlighted a growing and serious problem that is an issue in nearly every city large or small throughout the United States.”

The Alexia Foundation created the Women’s Initiative grant earlier this year to support a photographer documenting “abuses against women in the United States.” The Alexia Foundation Photojournalism Advisory Committee chose Matsui, Mary Calvert and Carlos Javier Ortiz as the three finalists. Judges, including Foundation board members, an administrator from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University and Brian Storm, founder of MediaStorm, reviewed all three proposals and awarded the Women’s Initiative grant to Matsui. A symposium, fundraiser and exhibition featuring work from the Women’s Initiative as well as other Alexia Foundation photographers will take place in Fall 2013. Each year the Foundation also awards grants to student and professional photographers who, through their work, “drive change in the effort to make the world a better place.”

Matsui is a documentary, editorial and commercial photographer and multimedia producer based in Seattle. Over the course of his career he’s worked on a number of projects that deal with the sexual abuse of women, including founding a non-profit organization that uses multimedia productions as a way to start discussions on sexual violence.

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