Isaac Julien and Andi Galdi Vinko Win the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards- The two winning titles of the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Photography and Moving Image Book Awards have been chosen as exemplary demonstrations of originality and excellence in the fields of moving image and photography book publishing, from the past year.
Isaac Julien wins the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award for Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass (DelMonico Books). A visual and literary meditation that connects Julien’s artworks with archival images of Frederick Douglass, the visionary African American orator, philosopher, intellectual, and self-liberated freedom-fighter, alongside essays that consider Douglass’ enduring legacy.
Andi Galdi Vinko wins the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award for Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back (Trolley Books) which explores new motherhood in all its messy, beautiful reality. Acting as a visual diary of those early months, it juxtaposes the mundane with the momentous.
Isaac Julien and Andi Galdi Vinko equally share a £10,000 prize fund. Additionally, the Kraszna- Krausz Foundation, which gives the Awards, will be curating events celebrating each of the 2023 winners’ books with the artists present. These will take place in London in the Autumn in collaboration with the Barbican for the Moving Image book award – including a screening and conversation; and with the V&A South Kensington for the Photography book award.
The 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, the 38th edition, marks the highest number of submissions in its history and a significant increase on previous years’ totals, reflecting the dynamism and demand in moving image and photography publishing.
Themes including sleep, grief, identity, race, community, and the environment made up the 20 longlisted titles for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards. The longlists, ten for the Photography category and ten for the Moving Image category, were announced in April 2023 and were exhibited at Photo London 2023. The six shortlisted publications, three in the Photography category and three in the Moving Image category, were announced in May 2023.
Judge of the 2023 Moving Image Book Award, Jonathan Ali, film curator, film festival director, and writer, as well as co-founder of Twelve30 Collective, a London-based initiative dedicated to screening Caribbean cinema says of Isaac Julien’s winning publication;
The catalogue of Isaac Julien’s installation on Frederick Douglass, ‘Lessons of the Hour’ manages to be as magisterial as the ten-screen work. This exquisitely made hardback balances formidable commissioned and existing essays with historical photos and newspaper clippings, stills and installation views, and material on photography and Black subjecthood, appropriate to a work dedicated to the most photographed person of the 19th century. In every way, shape and form a considerable achievement.
Sarah Allen, Head of Programme at South London Gallery and Judge of the 2023 Photography Book Award, explains of Andi Galdi Vinko’s winning publication,
I am delighted that ‘Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back’ is the winner of the Kraszna-Krausz 2023 Photography Book Award. Beautifully sequenced and thoughtfully produced, this book peeks behind the curtain at the tender yet raw first years of motherhood. Andi Galdi Vinko handles this important yet underexposed topic with nuance, humour and candour – her approach is a breath of fresh air.
Since 1985 the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have recognised individuals who have made an outstanding original or lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contribution to literature concerning photography or the moving image (including film, television, video, and new media).
Congratulations to both winners, whose excellent books were themselves selected from shortlists of the highest standard, maintaining the Kraszna-Krausz Awards’ reputation for recognising outstanding quality in photography and moving image book publishing in this, our 38th year.
Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, says of this year’s winners
Two judging panels made up respectively of three internationally recognised experts in their specialist fields drawn from the worlds of fine art, photography, film, galleries, museums, academia and publishing, were responsible for deciding the two winners as well as the previous longlists and shortlists of the Photography and Moving Image awards. In the opinion of the judges, the winning books have made a significant contribution to the art, history, research, criticism, science or conservation of photography or the moving image. In addition to the visual and written content, submissions are judged on the standards of production, format and design.
The 2023 Photography Book Award judges are Sarah Allen, Head of Programme at South London Gallery and previously a curator at Tate Modern; photographer Vanley Burke who produces work which seeks to counteract negative or stereotypical imagery of Black people found in mainstream media; and Richard Ovenden, OBE, an author and Bodley’s librarian at University of Oxford.
The 2023 Moving Image Book Award judges are – Jonathan Ali, film curator and writer, and currently Director of Programming for Third Horizon Film Festival as well as co-founder of Twelve30 Collective, a London-based initiative dedicated to screening Caribbean cinema; film scholar and critic, Elena Gorfinkel, who is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London; and Jane Giles, a London-based film writer whose book Scala Cinema 1978-1993 (FAB Press) won the Kraszna-Krausz 2019 award for Moving Image book publication.
Submissions for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, which is free to enter, are invited from publishers, authors, collectives and individuals self-publishing their work. Books entered must have been published for the first time between 1 January and 31 December 2022 and distributed and available to buy in the UK. Non-English language books must be accompanied by an English language translation of all text and submissions in the Photography Book award category must contain a significant textual element as image-only books are not eligible. Up to six different titles can be entered with each having a minimum run of 100 copies.
The call for the 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards will be issued in November 2023.
The 10 selected titles for the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award
Winner Sorry I Gave Birth I Disappeared But Now I’m Back by Andi Galdi Vinko (Trolley Books)
Shortlisted Helvécia: A Swiss Colonial History in Brazil by Dom Smaz and Milena Machado Neves (Lars Muller Publishers), Stranger Fruit by Jon Henry (Monolith Editions)
Longlisted A Stranger In My Mother’s Kitchen by Celine Marchbank (Dewi Lewis Publishing), Bank Top by Craig Easton (GOST Books), Marilyn Nance: Last Day in Lagos by Oluremi C. Onabanjo (Co-published by the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA) and Fourthwall Books), Odesa by Yelena Yemchuk (GOST Books), On Rape by Laia Abril (Dewi Lewis Publishing),SCUMB Manifesto by Justine Kurland (MACK) & Wahala by Robin Hinsch (GOST Books)
The 10 selected titles for the 2023 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award –
Winner Isaac Julien: Lessons of the Hour – Frederick Douglass by Isaac Julien (DelMonico Books)
Shortlisted At the Edges of Sleep: Moving Images and Somnolent Spectators by Jean Ma (University of California Press), Dwoskino: The Gaze of Stephen Dwoskin by Rachel Garfield, Henry K Miller (eds) (LUX)
Longlisted Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories by Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen (Intellect Books), Design in Motion: Film Experiments at the Bauhaus by Laura A. Frahm (The MIT Press), Jennifer West: Media Archaeology by Stuart Comer, Jennifer West, Norman Klein, Andy Campbell, ed. Chelsea Weathers (Radius Books), Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper by Giovanni Marchini Camia, Annabel Brady-Brown (Fireflies Press), Relaying Cinema in Midcentury Iran: Material Cultures in Transit by Kaveh Askari (University of California Press), The Channeled Image: Art and Media Politics after Television by Erica Levin (The University of Chicago Press) & The Venice International Film Festival 1932-2022 by Gian Piero Brunetta and Annabel Brady-Brown (eds) (La Biennale di Venezia)
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