The photobook published in Lithuania has been nominated for two global awards
Last year’s photographic edition of the album “The Ghetto Lane in Wilna” and the accompanying book “Hommage à Moï Ver” by Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic, also known as Moï Ver, a master of avant-garde photography from Vilnius and the student of the Bauhaus School, attracted the attention of two world competitions. The editors of the publication are Sigutė Chlebinskaitė, Mindaugas Kvietkauskas and Nissan N. Perez.
The photo book “Hommage à Moï Ver: The Ghetto Lane in Wilna” was selected by the international commission to the short list of the global competition “PhotoBook Awards 2020”, the top five in the category of photo catalogues. Over 700 books were submitted to the competition, thirty-five of which were nominated. The prestigious competition is organised by the Aperture Foundation (USA) and Paris Photo (France). The nominated books will be on display from 5 to 28 November at the “Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards 2020” exhibition in Paris.
The publication was also judged by the jury of another prestigious international competition, the photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles (France) and was included in the top ten in the Historical Book category.
Moï Ver’s debut photo album about Jewish Vilnius, published in four languages by Emil Schaeffer in 1931, was one of three artistic photography projects that have gained worldwide recognition for this photographer due to his masterly used photomontage technique. This book was known as a bibliophilic rarity, while experts in photography, Judaica or the history of Vilnius regarded it as an exceptional publication in which the Jerusalem of Lithuania became the object of an avant-garde experiment. The original edition of this book is kept in the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania.
The book “Hommage à Moï Ver: The Ghetto Lane in Wilna” was published by the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore. Dissemination abroad is carried out in cooperation with Kaunas Photography Gallery.
The book accompanied the retrospective exhibition “Moï Ver. Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic. Montages of Modernity”.
Photo from the archive of the book’s editors