This week on Friday Round Up it's all about photobooks - the inaugural Photobook Melbourne Festival kicks off next week. Check out the preview here including book awards and exhibitions. Plus FotoEvidence and Tanya Habjouqa join forces to publish Occupied Pleasures and more links to interesting stories.
Festival Debut:
Photobook Melbourne
12-22 February
Photobook Melbourne Festival Director
Heidi Romano
This year Australia has a new photography festival to add to the calendar: Photobook Melbourne. The brainchild of fine art photographer and designer, and now Festival Director, Heidi Romano, and co-founder Daniel Boetker Smith - Director of Asia-Pacific Photobook Archive, Photobook Melbourne kicks off on 12th February.
This ten-day Festival promises to introduce Melbournians to a vast array of photobooks, including those that were finalists in the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards over the past three years.
“What we’re showing are pretty much the best books of the world. I was really lucky to see the Aperture books at Paris Photo in 2013 and I just fell in love with this whole idea that you can see, and touch all these amazing books…It is the tactility, which inspired me so much,” says Heidi Romano.
She continues. “Books travel lightly. With the limited funding we had I could afford to get lots of books over here, but I couldn’t afford 200 exhibitions! With all of these books coming from around the world I feel like I can actually showcase these little mini-exhibitions within the Festival. And it is also very interesting to expose Australia and especially Melbourne to the Aperture Prize and to share the awards that are happening around the world”.
Photobook Melbourne will have more than 200 photobooks on display, the majority of which will be available to physically engage with. In addition to the Paris Photo-Aperture Awards finalists, books from Photobook Ireland’s library project and the Photobook Club UK will be on display. A Book Fair is also scheduled with representation from local and international photobook publishers.
The programme also includes talks, workshops, studio visits and nine exhibitions. #dysturb will participate too, although what they are posting on the streets of Melbourne is a closely guarded secret. The inclusion of #dysturb fulfills Romano’s desire to have a “political element” without it becoming a photojournalism festival.
On the Festival’s opening night the winner of the 2015 Australian Photobook of the Year Awards, will be announced. The Awards attracted around 100 entries from which 15 finalists were chosen.
Australian Photobook of the Year Awards* – Finalists
Ashely Gilbertson - Bedrooms of the Fallen
Jackson Eaton – Better Half
Jesse Marlow – Don’t Just Tell Them, Show Them
Glenn Sloggett – Fibro Dreams
Ying Ang – Gold Coast
Kristian Laemmle-Ruff – In the Folds of Hills
Odette England – Lover of Home
Kelvin Skewes – Nauru: What was taken and what was given
Jessie + Jacqueline DiBlasi – Nonna to Nana
Emma Phillips – SALT
Brendan Esposito – The Beginning
Andrea Francolini – The Kings of KKH
David Kirkland – Tribal PNG
Stephen Dupont – Typhoon
Raphaela Rosella – We Met a Little Early But I Get to Love You Longer
*Presented by the Festival’s major sponsor Momento Pro
Photobook Melbourne 12-22 February
Various venues
Visit the website and check the Festival’s Facebook page for updates
Selected Programme Highlights: 
(C) Robert Zhao Renhui - A guide to the flora and fauna of the world
Photobook Melbourne Opening Night &
Australian Photobook of the Year Awards
12 February, 6pm
Centre for Contemporary Photography
404 George St
Fitzroy
Paris-Photo Aperture Photobook Awards Exhibition
Opening Friday 13 February
The Baron Said
83 Kerr Street
Fitzroy
The Photobook Melbourne Fair
14 & 15 February
Centre for Contemporary Photography
Photobook Publishing Panel Discussion
16 February
Photography Studies College
65 City Road
Southbank
Free. Limited seats. Bookings essential. Visit website for details.
Photobook Melbourne Exhibition Programme:
Opening 12 February:
Robert Zhao Renhui
A guide to the flora and fauna of the world
Centre for Contemporary Photography
Wouter van de Voorde - Sunrise
Colour Factory
409 – 429 Gore Street
Fitzroy
Glen Sloggett - Fibro Dreams
Strange Neighbour
395 – 397 Gore St
Fitzroy
Opening 14 February:
Jordan Madge - Backwoods
Lindberg Gallery
67 Cambridge Street
Collingwood
Sarah Pannell - East of the Euphrates
Neospace
7 Campbell Street
Collingwood
Katrin Koenning - Indefinitely
James Makin Gallery
67 Cambridge Street
Collingwood
Yaakov Israel
The Quest for the Man on The White Donkey
Lindberg Galleries
Opening 17 February:
Sam Wong - NY 
Jack Shelton - LA
No Vacancy Gallery
34 – 40 Jane Bell Lane
Melbourne
Kickstarter Campaign:
Occupied Pleasures - Tanya Habjouqa
(C) Tanya Habjouqa
FotoEvidence and award-winning documentary photographer Tanya Habjouqa have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the production of a hardcover book of Habjouqa's study of the Palestinian people. Habjouqa's body of work focuses on the everyday, ordinary things that people do to find pleasure and joy in the shadow of conflict. This is the fifth Kickstarter collaboration FotoEvidence has entered into with a photojournalist and the strategy is proving successful in bringing important stories into the public consciousness. Publisher Svetlana Bachevanova said this week that the campaign had already reached its target long before the end date, which is fantastic and further proof that people will pay for quality work. But if you want to support this worthy book, and allow Habjouqa to expand its scope, you can still contribute. Visit the Kickstarter campaign here.
(C) Tanya Habjouqa
Links to Interesting stories from the world of photography:
NPPA funded study into what make a photograph memorable, shareable, and worth publishing
Time's Photojournalism Links - 10 Best Photo Essays of the Month
Wired Raw File: Ninjas: Gold Rush In Mongolia
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