Australia’s Momento Pro wins prestigious “Best of Show” for limited edition book
Sydney based printer, Momento Pro, has attained the ultimate graphic arts industry honor by winning the 2019 Premier Print Awards James H. Mayes Jr. Memorial ‘Best of Show’ prize, for a collector’s edition art book, Middlehurst | Middle Earth, by Australian landscape photographer Peter Eastway.
Now in their 71st year, the Premier Print Awards is the largest and most prestigious print competition on the global scene, and the Academy Awards of the print world. Michael Makin, President and CEO of Printing Industries of America, stated “The Benny winners represent the best our industry has to offer. This year’s entries were outstanding, with 2,238 from 13 countries.”
In June, Momento Pro was notified Middlehurst | Middle Earth had won 2019 Best of Category for Art Books (4 or more colors), representing the most outstanding coffee-table book devoted to the reproduction of art, photography, or artistic collections. The judges stated, “The title of this masterpiece is Middle Earth but a better title might be out of this world! Each spread is a visual feast for the senses. In the toughest category, this is numero uno. Extraordinary color!”
On Oct. 2, at the Premier Print Awards Gala dinner in Chicago, the book was also awarded ‘Best of Show.’ Award Manager, Mike Packard describes this as, “the #1 award of the evening, the best of the best, resulting from all the Best of Category winners being judged against each other, and this was as close to a unanimous decision as we have ever had. Middlehurst | Middle Earth is a collector’s item. Congrats Momento Pro on your Best in Show.”
This self-published limited-edition book is a 42 x 42 cm inkjet-printed colossus featuring photography from Australian photographer Peter Eastway. Eastway captured the grandeur of the New Zealand landscape on a Phase 1 camera. The book was handcrafted from the highest quality materials with the longest lifespan available today. It was printed onto 100 percent cotton rag using Epson Ultrachrome archival inks, and color profiles created by international color expert Les Walkling. These were the same ingredients that led Momento Pro to winning the Art Books (4 or more colors) category in 2016 for the Ken Duncan Portfolio Collection – also a collector’s item.
Momento Pro co-founder Geoff Hunt, confirmed, “winning the ‘Best of Show’ is humbling recognition of our 15-year focus on quality, not quantity, for all our products, and for all our customers – consumers, professionals, photographers, artists and corporates. We’ll also continue helping Antipodeans preserve their artwork and memories in world-class quality prints, right here in Sydney, and prove that printing photographs is far from dead.”
Since the family-owned print-on-demand photo book service was established in 2004, Momento Pro has won 100 print awards, and the respect of the local photography and print industry for their community support including: establishing the first photo book awards in Australia and New Zealand; co-founding the first photo book festivals in Australia and New Zealand; contributing to the preservation of 52 antipodean photobooks in the Tate (UK); supporting the launch of hundreds of self published books; and establishing programs to assist students and camera club members.stralia