Announcing the Light Work Photobook Award 2019

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Then came Sandy Hook. I remember the day vividly, the complicated emotions embedding themselves and lingering for a long time. Over the following year, I thought seriously about the ways we absorb and synthesize this kind of trauma as a culture, and about how I could begin to approach it as a storyteller. I started visiting sites of mass shootings—from Columbine to Sandy Hook—in an attempt to find the meaning behind this confounding accumulation of grief. — Andres Gonzalez

We are pleased to announce Andres Gonzalez as the recipient of the 2019 Light Work Photobook Award. His monograph American Origami,” co-published by Light Work and Fw:Books, is brilliantly designed by Hans Gremmen. Light Work gives the Photobook Award annually to an artistic project that deserves international attention. As with all of Light Work’s programs, in selecting the artists for this recognition we seek to highlight emerging and underrepresented artists who come from diverse backgrounds.

“American Origami presents an unusual and moving reflection on the complexity of a seemingly endless cycle of gun violence in America—a timely publication that is visually striking, poetic, and painful,” said Light Work Director Shane Lavalette. “We are pleased to present Andres Gonzalez with the 2019 Photobook Award, for this powerful project.”

Reflecting on his selection for this year’s award, Gonzalez said, “I am extremely honored to be awarded this year’s Light Work Photobook Award. I arrived at Light Work in 2017 with a backpack full of hard drives and negatives not knowing what was to come of my time at the residency. A month later, with the help and feedback from the Light Work staff, I had a book dummy ready to print. It makes me so very happy to come back full circle and have Light Work co-publish American Origami with Fw:Books.

Andres Gonzalez
American Origami
Fw:Books/Light Work, 2019
Softcover, 384 pages
ISBN: 978-94-90119-81-2
First Edition
Signed by the artist

Andres Gonzalez’s raw project closely examines the epidemic of mass shootings in American schools. His collection of first-person interviews, condolence items, ephemera, and blunt images—made and archival—coalesce in this compelling photobook, depicting a country that violence has sometimes overwhelmed. Gonzalez elaborates, “The varied elements repeat and fold into each other, illuminating the relationship between myth-making and atonement.” American Origami takes the reader on a visual journey of shared grief that illuminates moments of beauty and brings into focus the moral questions inherent in acts of collective healing.
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Andres Gonzalez is an educator, photographer, and visual artist living in Vallejo, California. His current work synthesizes in-depth research and the poetics of photography, looking for truths behind the fictional, mythic aspects of American history. He is a graduate of Pomona College and received his MA in Visual Communications from Ohio University in 2004. Gonzalez is a Fulbright Fellow and was selected as one of PDN’s 30. He has also received recognition from the Pulitzer Center, the Magenta Foundation, the Alexia Foundation, and his work has been exhibited internationally. Gonzalez participated in Light Work’s Artist-in-Residence program in October 2017.

Pre-order a first edition SIGNED copy of our 2020 Book Collectors Offer American Origami by Andres Gonzalez and you will also receive a complimentary subscription to Contact Sheet (a $115 value) for only $75!