2008 Awards Winners Announced
New histories of Victorian and Modernist photography and British film and video art share £10,000.
Winner: Best Moving Image Book – David Curtis, A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004 (BFI).
A groundbreaking work which puts the recent achievements of famous artists like Douglas Gordon and Gillian Wearing into their long-term historical context.
Co-Winner: Best Photography Book – Matthew S. Witkovsky, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945 (Thames and Hudson).
A beautifully illustrated monograph describing the cultural background of such 20th century masters as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and André Kertesz and which casts light on the wider historical context of Andor Kraszna-Krausz, publishing pioneer and originator of the Kraszna-Krausz Awards
Co-Winner: Best Photography Book – Roger Taylor, Impressed By Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (Yale University Press).
The culmination of decades of research by a distinguished photohistorian, this lavishly illustrated volume definitively documents the aesthetic and technical development of early Victorian paper negatives and prints
The Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, the UK’s leading prize for books on photography and the moving image, were today announced at the London Book Fair. For more than twenty years these awards have been given to outstanding books in the fields of photography and the moving image, which are sure to make original and lasting contributions to their respective disciplines. The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation also offers grants to assist in the development and completion of new or unfinished projects, works or literature in the fields of photography and the moving image.
This year, three books share a prize fund of £10,000. Two photography titles receive £2,500 each, being joint photography books of the year. Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945 and Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860, based on landmark exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are beautifully produced and illustrated studies of their subjects. Impressed by Light is a landmark study of the early years of British photography, a crucial period in establishing the visual vocabulary as well as the technical possibilities of the medium. The rich artistic legacy of interwar central Europe is the subject of Foto, a lavish document of an under-researched but vitally important region and period.
The winner of the best moving image book, receiving £5000, is the first-ever comprehensive history of film and video as used by artists in Britain. Written by a practising artist, curator and academic, David Curtis’s A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain, 1897-2004 puts the Turner Prize-winning work of such contemporary visual artists as Gillian Wearing, Douglas Gordon and Mark Wallinger in the context of more than a century of artists’ film and video in the UK.
Judges’ and Trustees’ Comments on the Winning Books:
Colin Ford CBE, Chair of Trustees of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, said:
These three titles demonstrate that the state of publishing on photography, film, video and digital media is very healthy. Our distinguished judges had to make very tough choices but have, I believe, come up with three books that offer vital insights, in their different ways, into the progress of the arts of photography and film from their very beginnings to today.
Nick James, Editor of Sight & Sound and chair of judges for the moving image category, said:
After considerable debate, we unanimously decided that A History of Artists’ Film and Video in Britain should win. Curtis’ knowledge of his subject is as close to complete as can be imagined, yet he has the knack of conveying this erudition with such an infectious enthusiasm – tracing and describing the lesser-known currents of British film with such a sense of fun and experiment – that you wish you had been there at every stage. The book is superbly and accessibly illustrated and designed and is a real achievement on every level.
Sarah Jackson, freelance picture editor and photography category judge, continued:
The two winners of the Kraszna-Krausz award for photography books explore very different areas of the history of photography with passionate engagement and considerable depth of understanding. Both are models of scholarship, combining fascinating and readable narratives with a superb and inspiring selection of illustrations.
Roger Taylor’s Impressed by Light brings to life the story of British paper-to-paper photography – the invention of William Henry Fox Talbot – through the 1840s and 1850s, revealing remarkable aesthetic as well as technical achievements. Matthew Witkovsky’s Foto ably demonstrates the enormous social and political upheavals in European history. These two books are filled with ideas and imagery that provide considerable and ever relevant intellectual and visual stimulation.