Shortlist for 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards Announced: 6 Titles Celebrate Photography and Moving Image Publishing

Of the hundreds of titles submitted this year, six shortlisted publications, three in the Photography category and three in the Moving Image category, have been announced for the 39th edition of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, the UK's leading annual prize celebrating excellence in photography and moving image publishing.

The winner of each category, sharing a £10,000 prize fund, will be announced at the end of June 2024. Events celebrating the 2024 awards and the winners will take place in Autumn 2024. Previous winners' events have been held in collaboration with the Barbican and the V&A.

The 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards reflects the dynamism and demand in moving image and photography publishing.

The longlist of twenty titles, ten for the Photography category and ten for the Moving Image category, was announced in May 2024 and was exhibited at Photo London 2024.

The 3 Shortlisted Titles for the 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award are:
Far Away From Home: The Voices, the Body and the Periphery by Hristina Tasheva (Self Published) - An ambitious attempt at mapping the disparities between two national experiences of Communism in the twentieth century - the Dutch and the Bulgarian - as they were impacted by the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. The book includes contemporary photography, found imagery, and archival research, as well as a pressed flower gathered by Tasheva from visits to Dachau and Mauthausen concentration camp memorials.

Cover of Far Away From Home by Hristina Tasheva © Hristina Tasheva

From the book 'Far Away from Home The Voices, the Body and the Periphery' © Hristina Tasheva

Hard Times are Fighting Times by Alice Proujansky (Gnomic Book) - Proujansky reconstructs her parents' radical past, and reckons with what to keep and what to let go. Photographs of their propaganda archive, surveillance records, family photographs and current lives depict their activism, and subsequent turn towards family life. Proujansky invites the viewer to join an intimate observation of the collision between the political and the familial.

Book Cover, From Hard Times are Fighting Times© Alice Proujansky

My mother holds me. Leverett, Massachusetts, 2019. From Hard Times are Fighting Times © Alice Proujansky

Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body by RaMell Ross (MACK) - Bringing together Ross's large-format photographs, sculptures, conceptual works, and selected films, together with illuminating texts by Ross and a host of writers, this ambitious publication presents a potent visual chronicle of the American South and its landscape that is both mysterious and quotidian, a historical document and a radical imagining of the future.

Cover of Spell, Time, Practice, American, Body by RaMell Ross (MACK 2023). Courtesy the artist and MACK

RaMell Ross, Still from 'Return to Origin'

The 3 Shortlisted Titles for the 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award are
African Cinema: Manifesto and Practice for Cultural Decolonization: Volumes 1 - 3 by Michael T. Martin and Gaston J. M. Kaboré (eds) with Allison J. Brown, Cole Nelson, and Joseph E. Roskos (Indiana University Press) - challenging established views and assumptions about traditions and practices of filmmaking in the African diaspora, this three-volume set offers readers a researched critique on Black film.

Cover of Volume 1 of African Cinema- Manifesto and Practice for Cultural Decolonization- Volumes 1 - 3 by Michael T. Martin and Gaston J. M. Kaboré (eds)

Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China by Jie Li (Columbia University Press) - drawing on a wealth of archives, memoirs, interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork this is a media history of Chinese film exhibition and reception that offers fresh insights into the powers and limits of propaganda.

Cover of Cinematic Guerrillas- Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China by Jie Li. Published by Columbia University Press

The Rainbow's Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity by Kirsty Sinclair Dootson (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art) - this revolutionary history brings to light how new colour technologies informed ideas about British national identity during a period of profound social change, when the challenges of industrialisation, decolonisation of the Empire and evolving attitudes to race and gender reshaped the nation.

Cover of The Rainbow's Gravity- Colour, Materiality and British Modernity by Kirsty Sinclair Dootson. Published by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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).

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, are responsible for deciding the subsequent longlists, shortlists and winners of the Photography and Moving Image awards.

Anthony Luvera, an artist, writer, Associate Professor in the Research Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities at Coventry University, and Judge of the 2024 Photography Book Award, explains of his judging experience, Judging the 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award provided a fascinating insight into photobook publishing over the past year. The breadth of submissions reminded me that despite the ubiquity of images in our everyday lives, the use of photography as a form of sustained inquiry or as a storytelling tool continues to hold enormous, revelatory power, enabling our surroundings to be seen and understood in ways previously unknown. The creative role photobook publishing plays in conveying insights into the work of artists and the world around us is important now more than ever.

Judge of the 2024 Moving Image Book Award, Dr Victor Fan who is Reader in Film and Media Philosophy at the Department of Film Studies, King's College London, said of the experience, It was an absolute pleasure to read so many vibrant, creative, and groundbreaking works on the cinema from the past year. Learning about new historiographical methods, previously overlooked perspectives on film and media philosophy and aesthetics, as well as freshly available archival materials was a truly inspiring experience. I am especially excited by how scholars, journalists, photographers, and filmmakers have actively offered new epistemes and epistemologies that help us decolonise and deimperialise film and media studies, thus enabling us to theorise, historicise, and create from the perspectives of women, trans and queer individuals, and artists and scholars of colour.

Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, says of this year's shortlists, These six titles unquestionably continue our long history of attracting superlative books on photography and the moving image as entries for the sought after Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards.

The winners of the 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Book Award (Photography and Moving Image) will be announced at the end of June 2024. The call for the 2025 Awards will be issued in November 2024.

Bryan Adams: Hear the World

By Bryan Adams

Publisher : Steidl

2024 | 264 pages

Hear the World is a visually compelling and heartwarming collection of over 120 portraits by musician and photographer Bryan Adams, created in collaboration with the Hear the World Foundation. This beautifully curated book brings together some of the most recognizable faces from the worlds of film, music, fashion, and beyond—including Julianne Moore, Bruce Springsteen, The Weeknd, Priyanka Chopra, Jared Leto, Léa Seydoux, and Lenny Kravitz—all captured through Adams' distinctive lens. Each subject strikes the signature "Hear the World" pose, with a hand cupped behind one ear, symbolizing their support for hearing awareness.

The Hear the World Foundation, which focuses on supporting children with hearing loss in low- and middle-income countries, is grounded in the belief that every child deserves the opportunity to hear and live life to its fullest. Adams has been a passionate collaborator with the foundation since 2007, and Hear the World is the culmination of their shared vision to highlight the importance of conscious hearing and advocate for global accessibility to hearing care.

The portraits in Hear the World offer more than just familiar faces—they capture the humanity, individuality, and solidarity of renowned ambassadors uniting for a vital cause. Each image stands as a reminder of the preciousness of sound and the often-overlooked gift of hearing. Through this striking visual anthology, Adams not only showcases his skill behind the camera but also raises awareness of hearing loss and celebrates the foundation's mission.

This book is a testament to the power of art, philanthropy, and collaboration, making Hear the World a touching and meaningful contribution to both the world of photography and the cause of hearing health.

All About Bryan Adams

Mary Ellen Mark: Indian Circus

By Mary Ellen Mark

Publisher : Steidl

2024 | 160 pages

Playful yet haunting, Mary Ellen Mark’s photographs of Indian circus performers depict a world on the brink of disappearance. In 1969, Mark first traveled to India and photographed a circus, captivated by its "beauty and innocence." Two decades later, she returned for six months to document 18 circuses across the country, from bustling cities to remote villages.

Ranging from large troupes with hundreds of performers—both human and animal—to small, intimate acts, Mark's lens captures not the spectacle of the shows, but the quiet moments in between: scenes of practice, rest, and life beyond the spotlight. Her focus is on the human experience—marked by the contradictions of humor and sadness, beauty and hardship. By the time of Mark’s project, Indian circuses were already fading, holding onto an innocence long lost in the West, as they struggled against the pressures of the modern world.

This new edition of her 1993 book preserves the original text and images but reimagines the sequence and design, staying true to Mark’s poignant vision of a dying art form.

All About Mary Ellen Mark

Peter Lindbergh: Dior

By Peter Lindbergh

Publisher : TASCHEN

2024 | 512 pages

Peter Lindbergh photographed Dior’s most exceptional muses, Marion Cotillard and Charlize Theron among them, and signed campaigns for Lady Dior and J'Adore with his inimitable style. Throughout his career, the photographer was one of the house’s closest collaborators. This final book was an original cocreation that was close to the artist’s heart—and to ours.

Seventy years of Dior history projected against the effervescence of Times Square, New York: this was the concept behind Lindbergh’s project, extraordinary both in scope and dimension, for which Dior, in an unusual move, allowed an unprecedented number of priceless garments to be taken from its vaults in Paris and shipped across the Atlantic.

The result is electric. Amid the frenzy of Times Square, Alek Wek glows in the immaculate 1947 Bar suit, the storied ensemble that launched the House of Dior. In snatches of street scenes, models Saskia de Brauw, Karen Elson, and Amber Valletta flit through crowds and scaffolding, are reflected in building façades, and draped in haute couture, from pieces hand-sewn by Christian Dior to more recent designs by Maria Grazia Chiuri. Lindbergh’s trademark monochrome and color photographs masterfully highlight the intricacies, silhouettes, and textures of each garment.

Lindbergh himself is present in every aspect of this publication designed by his long-time collaborator and friend Juan Gatti. This volume features 165 never-before-published images from the shoot, including an introduction by Martin Harrison, and pays homage to Lindbergh’s profound relationship with the Parisian House by curating more than 100 of his photographs of Dior creations, from haute couture to ready-to-wear, men’s and women’s, originally published in some of the world’s most prestigious magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. A breathtaking tribute to two pillars of fashion and photography and their timeless collaborations.

All About Peter Lindbergh

Toilet Alex Paper Prager

By Alex Prager, Maurizio Cattelan, Pierpaolo Ferrari

Publisher : Damiani

2024 | 40 pages

A captivating fusion of the surreal worlds of Toilet Paper and the striking imagery of artist, director, and screenwriter Alex Prager, the latest issue of Toilet Paper magazine presents a visual dialogue between these creative forces. The issue showcases 12 of Prager’s evocative images alongside 12 conceived by the Toilet Paper team. Known for its vibrant aesthetics and playful visual twists, Toilet Paper enters into a dynamic exchange with Prager’s technicolor universe, where the line between reality and fiction is artfully blurred. Her signature use of archetypes, everyday objects, humor, and allegory creates a provocative and mysterious journey throughout the pages. This collaboration follows in the footsteps of ToiletMartin PaperParr (2018), a special edition that celebrated the iconic work of internationally acclaimed photographer Martin Parr, along with the creative minds of Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Like its predecessor, this issue brings together distinctive visual worlds in a way that delights and intrigues.

Shortlist for 2024 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards Announced: 6 Titles Celebrate Photography and Moving Image Publishing

Kraszna-Krausz Foundation

Selected Books