The Kassel Dummy Award 2024

The Dummy Award is the international competition for the best unpublished photobook dummy of the year. Since 2010, the Kassel Fotobook Festival has been inviting photographers worldwide to take part in its „Kassel Dummy Award“. Over this period of time thousands of photobook-prototypes have been submitted from all over the world. Hundreds of books from the shortlist have been exhibited at countless international photography events, festivals and exhibition spaces. The participating photographers have been able to establish contacts with galleries, publishers and festivals and present their books to an international audience. As of 2023 the Kassel Dummy Award will be continued by the PhotoBookMuseum in Cologne. We are sure that this will increase the importance of the Dummy Award for a new generation of photographers and put it on an even broader footing. Together with MAS Matbaa in Istanbul, our printing and publishing partner, this is destined to maintain the high quality and reputation of the Dummy Award in the future. The rules are easy: each year we invite all photographers worldwide to take part. From all entries, around 50 books are selected for a shortlist to be exhibited at international photography events. Together with the votes of the shortlist jury each exhibiting venue has a vote — either determined by public vote or by curators choice. With these votes 5 winning books will be selected from the shortlist. One of these books will receive the PBM/MAS Prize. The book that wins the PBM/MAS Prize will be produced and published by the leading Turkish photobook printing and binding house MAS Matbaa in cooperation with the PhotoBookMuseum. The costs will be fully covered. The other 4 winning books will receive a production grant for printing their books at MAS Matbaa.