Momo Okabe wins Foam Paul Huf Award 2015

Momo Okabe was born in Tokyo in 1981 and received her B.F.A. in photography from Nihon University of Art in 2004. Her work has been nominated by many prestigious competitions in Japan including: Special Award “The 8th Exhibition of New Cosmos of Photography selected Nobuyoshi Araki “, P3 art and environment, Tokyo, 1999. Fine prize for” the 19th 3.3㎡ Exhibition”, Guardian Garden Tokyo, 2002.

Netherlands – Foam is proud to announce that Momo Okabe (b. 1981, Japan) was chosen as the winner of the Foam Paul Huf Award 2015 by an international jury today. Okabe won the prize for her projects Dildo and Bible in which she explores her relationship with two of her transgender lovers during their transition. This annual prize given to a photography talent under 35 years consists of € 20.000 and an exhibition in Foam Amsterdam. The jury was quoted as saying: “The diversity and high caliber of the submissions presented this year made for a lively review process. The wide-ranging approaches to the photographic medium exhibited by these young artists epitomize the open-mindedness and conceptual forwardness championed by Paul Huf. We are pleased to announce that the jury unanimously voted for Momo Okabe as this year’s winner. We were impressed by the emotional power of her projects, and the extremely personal nature of her work. Momo combines tenderness with a raw intimacy, which is revealed through her use of color, variety of subjects, and sensitive handling of an important and complex social issue like transsexualism. She operates in the lineage of Japanese photography that is highly regarded but has created an aesthic that is uniquely her own.” The members of the jury were: – Christopher McCall (chairman, director of Pier24 Photography, San Francisco, United States) – Felix Hoffmann (chief curator at C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany) – Whitney Johnson (deputy director of photography of National Geographic, Washington DC, United States) – Adam Mazur (curator and editor-in-chief of SZUM Magazine, Warsaw, Poland) – Brett Rogers (director of The Photographers’ Gallery, London, United Kingdom)The exhibition by Momo Okabe will be on show in Foam from 28 August through 25 October 2015.