Christopher Sims is this year's recipient of the prestigious Baum Award for Emerging American Photographers. The award, recently announced by the Baum Foundation and SF Camerawork, includes a solo exhibition at SF Camerawork and a $10,000 grant. The Sims exhibition will open in San Francisco on May 6, 2010.

The goal of the Baum Award is to promote photography as an art form by recognizing a talented and innovative artist working in photography. Christopher Sims was among the 50 artists whose work was considered by this year's jury, which included: Bruce Hainley, Artforum, Los Angeles; Erin O'Toole, department of photography, SFMOMA; and Jack von Euw, The Bancroft Library Pictorial Collection, UC Berkeley.

Sims's project, Theater of War: The Pretend Villages of Iraq and Afghanistan, was first exhibited in 2008 in a show curated by Ann Stewart Fine Art, at UNC's Center for the Study of the American South, in Chapel Hill, NC. Since then, the work has been exhibited at the Houston Center for Photography, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Light Factory, and the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art. Theater of War will next be seen at the FotoFest Biennial in Houston from March 12 to April 15 and then in San Francisco at SF Camerawork beginning May 6.