“Life Explore Soul” by Sakulchai Sikitikul wins URBAN Book Award 2022
Life Explore Soul, by Thai street photographer Sakulchai Sikitikul, is the winning project of URBAN Book Award 2022, the section of URBAN Photo Awards dedicated to authorial projects destined to become photographic books.
Life Explore Soul, selected by American photographer Susan Meiselas from over 100 competing projects, contains a series of street photos mainly set in Songkhla, Thailand, the author’s hometown.
“A good book has surprises”, writes Susan Meiselas in the introduction of the volume, “with the framing of a photograph, the relationship between images and the sequences as pages turn. Life Explore Soul invites this level of engagement for a viewer, through its juxtapositions, directing our eyes with multiple focal points, perspective shifts, and mysterious elements. At times one is unsure if these are images captured in a camera or constructed through collage.”
The photographic volume Life Explore Soul, published by Exhibit Around APS, will premiere at Trieste Photo Days, Saturday 29 October 2022 in the Auditorium of the Revoltella Museum, in the presence of Susan Meiselas.
Also as part of the festival, a selection of the best photos taken from the book will be exhibited at the “Stelio Crise” State Library in Trieste from 3 October to 4 November 2022.
Those interested can book a copy of Life Explore Soul at this link.
If you choose free pick-up at the festival, pre-orders are open until Sunday 16 October 2022, after which the book can only be ordered with shipping (or can be purchased directly at the festival).
From 2020 the URBAN Book Award has taken the place of the TPD Book Award, the “call for dummies” launched on the occasion of the Trieste Photo Days festival, thanks to which talents from all over the world were discovered, awarded and supported: in 2017 Tadashi Onishi with Lost in Shinjuku, in 2018 Zisis Kardianos with the InLimbo project and Hiro Tanaka with Around 42nd and 7th, in 2019 Ilya Shtutsa with Not Only Gray.
In 2020, the URBAN Book Award was awarded to the Journey to the Lowlands project by Valeria Sacchetti, while in 2021 the winning project was Where have the birds gone? by Nicolas St-Pierre.
Sakulchai Sikitikul is a street photographer from Songkhla, Thailand. After graduating from Silpakorn University with a degree in Communication Arts, he worked in an advertising company for a few years. His journey into photography began in 2006, at first mainly as a hobby due to the limited time available between study and work. Over the years, his interest in street photography has grown more and more, inspired mainly by the photographs of Steve McCurry, in particular by the composition of his images and his choice to shoot at the right moment without staging anything.
www.instagram.com/sakulchai_sikitikul
