The Dummy, I Loved My Wife (killing children is good for the economy), by the Belgium artist Dieter De Lathauwer, will be published and presented during Unseen Photo Fair 2017.
Dieter notes that his book “highlights one of the darkest sides of the previous century in Europe, which was and still remains under-exposed.”
This year’s jury members, Paul van Mameren (Managing Director, Lecturis), Irma Boom (graphic designer), Sean O’Hagan (journalist, The Guardian) and Francesco Zanot (Chief Curator, Camera Centro Italiano per la Fotografia’s), said: “The combination of found photographs, stills from propaganda films from the German authorities, and Lathauwer’s own evocative images made for a powerful and unsettling narrative.
“The subject concerns the psychiatric state hospitals where thousands of people were killed over two years in Austria, because they were Jews, gays or immigrants. His photographs of the locations merge with the found material to create a sustained mood that suggests the horror without depicting directly.
“It is an accomplished photo book about a very dark subject matter that, to this day, remains relatively unknown.”
The dummies selected for the shortlist are exhibited at the Unseen Book Market until Sunday, 25 September. The winner of the Unseen Dummy Award 2015 was the Japanese artist Yoshinori Masuda.
More information is available here.
