Born in Louisiana and currently based in Georgia, artist Candace Caston @candaceincolor received her BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. Caston uses primarily water-based media to explore the memory of place, her works acting as an intimate archive of remembered spaces from both her dreams and lived experience:
“Eyes look through the blinds towards the neighborhood, as the heat from outside seeps into the interior. I recall this as I reflect on the home I grew up in. Memories are captured in the windows, objects, and arrangements of a room or exterior space. They’re evoked by small details–the furniture, the weather outside, how the light moves through and around the house, or the shapes the blinds make as you part them to peek out. In reflecting on moments of solitude, seemingly small scenes become significant.”
See more from Candace Caston on our site. Link in bio.
As we approach the deadline for this year’s Booooooom Art & Photo Book Award, we’re taking a moment to look back at the 20+ projects we’ve helped bring to life as real printed books and zines over the past few years.
It’s amazing to see them all together. Every year, we’re blown away by the creativity of our audience: the ideas, the design, and the completely unique visions everyone has for their projects. Getting to see these in real life is one of the best parts of the award.
Huge thanks to @bookmobile_printing , who have helped make this possible from the beginning.
The 2026 Book Award closes in a couple weeks. If you have a project you want to turn into a book or zine, hit the 🔗 in bio.
Projects featured by:
Caleb Thal (@caleb_thal )
Kyoko Takenaka (@jinjabrew )
Matthew Walton (@mwalton.artwerk )
Olly Geary (@ollygeary )
Minhan Lin
João Lutz (@____lutz )
Angelo Dolojan (@dolojangelo )
Zeinab Diomande (@ztheratt )
Grace Dodds (@gcdodds )
Manda Quevedo (@crybabycowb0y )
Taylor Naoko (@taylornaoko ) & CJ Tuff
Cleo Peng (@cleo.peng )
Kevin Hopkins (@kevinhopkinsart )
Adri Tan (@atangerinee )
Sander Coers (@sandercoers )
Miya Turnbull (@miyamask )
Ashley A. Ross
Jeremy Starn (@jeremystarn )
Barbara Gabrielle (@barbaragabriellee )
Sheida Shekarian (@sheidashekarian )
Lindsay Ellary (@lindsayellary )
Lawrence Agyei (@lawrenceagyei )
Tom DesLongchamp (@tomthinks )
Francisco Gonzalez Camacho (@frangccom )
Working in gouache, acrylic, oil pastel, colored pencil, and hand-painted 3D elements, Michigan-born artist Aunia Kahn @auniakahn creates vibrant, layered compositions that blend personal narrative with rich cultural influences. A difficult upbringing and life-threatening health challenges have played an important role in shaping her practice and studio life:
“My art springs from a deep longing to connect with a world where my presence has been limited. Creativity became my lifeline during two decades of battling an undiagnosed illness. Now, my work reflects a narrative of personal evolution and gratitude for being alive. Rooted in symbolism, through vibrant colors and living beings, it embodies a journey of rebirth and self-discovery.”
Aunia Kahn’s next solo show will be at @thinkspace_art January 2027. See more of her work on our site. Link in bio.
Previously based in New York, João Lutz @____lutz is a photographer and director working in São Paulo. His work moves through portraiture, fashion, and film—drawn to charged atmospheres and the weight a single frame can hold.
Pomegranates is a visual and written response to the resurfacing of a childhood memory of sexual abuse—an experience long buried. The project began shortly after the memory returned and unfolded in real time through photography, poetry, and moments of stillness. The book does not follow a linear narrative. Instead, it moves like memory: fragmented, uncertain, and intimate. It is a work about remembering, about naming what was hidden, and about what it means to continue forward while holding both silence and truth.
João Lutz was selected as one of the @booooooom 2025 Art & Photo Book Award Winners! With support from @bookmobile_printing , we helped João turn his project into a book! If you want the opportunity to publish a book of your own work for free, you can apply for our 2026 Art & Photo Book Awards (🔗 in bio). See more from Pomegranates as well as our full interview with João below!
Walk_ is a project pairing photographs with audio recordings of the people and atmosphere in which they were captured by Brooklyn-based filmmaker and artist Derek Beck. Each instalment of the project involves shooting a single roll of 35mm film while walking a random route through a city or interviewing a subject, the first of which was started over 10 years ago:
“I was playing tourist after living in New York City for five years, and went to Central Park on a freezer cold Saturday afternoon. After walking through the Ramble in Central Park, and overhearing snippets of passing conversations, I arrived at these benches and sat down for a breather. I had my Canon AE-1 35mm camera with me and was struck with an idea. I took out my iPhone, started recording audio, put it in my jacket pocket, and took a photo of the benches”
Since then, Beck has shot 50 rolls of film, traversed 40 different cities, met hundreds of strangers and walked countless miles. And he doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.
There’s an unmistakable sincerity to Beck’s work, and at a time when social platforms continue to drift away from still imagery in favour of video, it offers a refreshing and thoughtful way of experiencing photography.
Another look inside our latest book, Tomorrow’s Talent 5.
For anyone new to the series, Tomorrow’s Talent is our ongoing series dedicated to discovering and championing the next wave of visual artists. Volume 5 features work from 60+ artists and is our biggest edition yet: 276 pages, and for the first time, a much larger format.
A huge thank you to every artist who contributed to this collection. This talented group of people inspires us and makes the whole thing worthwhile.
Featured spreads from:
@alicbrock (cover artist)
@avalonnuovo
@joshdstover
@dahnniii
@haley_manchon
@selpopart
@chubbynida
@jordanwarrenvisuals
@_lony_mathis
@yeo1n
Hit the 🔗 in bio to grab a copy and see more spreads!
Born and based in New York, photographer Orpheus Acosta @orpheusacosta was adopted at two months old by a Puerto Rican family. At 16, Acosta went in search of information about his adoption. He began documenting his environments through photography and video, often exploring feelings of displacement. These images are part of an ongoing reflection on how identity and emotion are mediated through systems that promise visibility yet often produce distance. Dysphoria emerges here not as spectacle, but as atmosphere—the gaps between people, the repetition of reaching out, and the quiet recognition that connection is never guaranteed:
“Long Time Caller, First Time Listener explores the dissonance between the promise of connection and the reality of isolation. Borrowing its title from the language of radio call-in culture, the project frames communication as an act of reaching outward without certainty of being received, where expression is constant but understanding remains unstable. Each image exists as both a call and an echo, contributing to a larger, unresolved conversation about what it means to speak, to listen, and to exist within a culture where both are increasingly out of sync.”
See more from the project on our site. Link in bio.
Caleb Thal (@caleb_thal ) was selected as one of the @booooooom Art & Photo Book Award Winners this past year!
With support from @Bookmobile_printing , we helped Caleb turn his project into a book for free! If you want the opportunity to publish a book of your own work, you can apply for our 2026 Art & Photo Book Awards now!
Currently based in Los Angeles, Photographer Caleb Thal has spent a lot of time in New York, Phoenix, and Dolores, Colorado. His new book, To Remember, is based around Caleb’s memories. Using printed, re-photographed, and altered images, Caleb reimagines each photograph as a way of tracing how photographs change long after they are first seen.
Read the interview with Caleb Thal over on the @booooooom website.
A series of photographs taken over the course of two summers in California by photographer, artist and educator, Blake Masi @blakemasi . Currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Masi’s work focuses on environments shaped by human systems and considers how these spaces reflect the psychological and cultural conditions of a post-digital generation. “Camp” is an ongoing project that captures Masi’s time working at a camp in the Northern Sierra region. Though surrounded by wilderness, cabins were built among trees and trails cut into the land. Here daily life is structured around shared labour and communal routines. Phones are not permitted, creating a feeling of existing slightly outside contemporary time:
“These photographs consider how individuals inhabit designed environments and leave traces of themselves within them. At the camp, daily routines including play, labor, and interpersonal relationships mark the space, just as the structure of the place shapes those who move through it. The camp becomes a temporary world built through collective participation, where human psychology impresses itself upon the landscape. In this setting, the tension between the artificial and the natural is negotiated and lived each day.”
Blake Masi is featured in Array 4 out now! See more on our site. Link in bio.
The Booooooom Art & Photo Book Award is officially open for submissions!
For our 5th edition, we’re helping bring 8 projects to life: 6 standalone books and 2 smaller perfect bound zines, each by a different artist, illustrator, or photographer, at zero cost to the selected applicants.
For anyone new to the award, this is an opportunity to turn a focused body of work into a real publication. From design to how it’s shared and sold, the project remains yours. We’re here to offer guidance along the way, but the book is yours to shape.
If you have a series or cohesive selection of work you’ve been wanting to turn into a book, we’d love to see it.
Image from one of last year’s winners, @caleb_thal
Hit the 🔗 in bio to learn more and apply!
Montreal-based artist Sylvia Trotter Ewens @sylvia_trotter.ewens received her DEC in Fine Arts from Dawson College, followed by a BFA and MFA in Painting at Concordia University. Her work blends architectural aesthetics, ecological discourse, and personal narrative, creating fragmented spaces that reflect shifting landscapes and subtle psychologies.
In “Echoes of Elsewhere”, Trotter Ewens’ fragmented environments are shaped as much by lived experience as by distance and imagination. Born in Honduras, Trotter Ewens was adopted as an infant and has long felt a sense of dual belonging. The works assembled here explore the lingering impressions of environments and relationships that persist across time and were created from photographs taken of both Honduras and Québec—the two distinct geographies merging to reflect Trotter Ewens’ own experience of being “neither completely of here nor there”.
“Echoes of Elsewhere” is currently on display at @platogallery until May 30.
Matthew Walton (@mwalton.artwerk ) was selected as one of the @booooooom Art & Photo Book Award Winners this past year! With support from @Bookmobile_printing , we helped Matthew turn his project into a book for free! If you want the opportunity to publish a book of your own work, you can apply for our 2026 Art & Photo Book Awards now!
Froot Loops features Matthew’s mixed-media-work-on-paper series highlighting the quiet charm of everyday queerness. Each piece reimagines a separate mundane moment, transformed by Matthew’s bold, graphic approach to figuration and his vibrant technicolor lens. These vignettes invite viewers into intimate, relatable scenes that blur the line between public and private space. It is within this liminal realm that Matthew’s camp and Cubist-coded figures live—uninhibited; a world all its own, where everyone is welcome to step inside.
Read the interview with Matthew Walton over on the @booooooom website.
