The jury of the 6th edition of the Star Photobook Dummy Award has selected The Bread and the Flowers, a photobook dummy by Myriam Meloni, as the winner. The dummy will now become a photobook with international distribution.
Nominated by artist and photographer Mireia Plans, who has collaborated with the Photographic Social Vision Foundation on participatory photography projects since 2004, Myriam Meloni asks in The Bread and the Flowers how much a city can be shaped by its own colonial myth.
This project moves beyond Tangier’s cosmopolitan and exoticised image, turning toward what that image leaves out: class, desire, and the fragile persistence of a city constantly evolving and resisting between its inherited past and the pressures of globalisation.
The decision of the jury of this 6th edition is based on the following statement:
The project is a poetically crafted narrative that offers a critical perspective on Tangier’s colonial history and its present. It moves beyond the city’s exoticised image, bringing us closer to the spirit of fragile resistance embodied by its people and architecture. Through the symbol of native plants, which become the thread running throughout the sequence, Myriam invites us to explore a city in constant transformation, caught between its past and the demands of modernity. The dummy is at an advanced stage of development, with a solid concept already well integrated into the form of the book.
The Bread and the Flowers: a work aligned with the values of the Star Photobook Dummy Award
The tenacity, closeness, respect and self-determination that run through this work are precisely the values the Star Photobook Dummy Award seeks to support. Its view of Tangier also connects with the mission of the Photographic Social Vision Foundation: understanding photography as a socially responsible tool, capable of opening debate and addressing issues of both global and personal significance.
Myriam Meloni’s artistic practice examines how historical power structures and entrenched privileges shape identities, environments and social relationships in contemporary society. Her work explores themes of migration and social class, weaving personal stories with broader socio-political narratives.
With a background in law and criminology, she combines in-depth research with intimate visual storytelling. Her photography has been exhibited at venues and festivals such as PhotoEspaña, Fotografia Europea, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Benaki Museum. She teaches at UNIR University. Her recent projects revolve around the European migratory control system, including On Clear Days You See Europe, which delves into the experiences of Sub-Saharan, Moroccan and European migrant women in a shared territory at the crossroads of Europe and Africa. Based in Tangier, she investigates the asymmetries in neocolonial relationships between Europe and North Africa.
At the Photographic Foundation, we would like to thank the international nominators for the quality of the proposals submitted to this edition, and the jury for the care and dedication with which they assessed each of the dummies.
Our congratulations to all the authors who took part, particularly those behind the six shortlisted dummies, and most especially to Myriam Meloni. We are now excited to begin the journey of turning The Bread and the Flowers into a photobook, together with its author and the partner publishers: Ediciones Posibles, Phree and Editorial RM.
