* Colonial and familial archives; cultural hybridity; intergenerational storytelling; notions of ‘the self’ and of ‘the other’; the preservation and also transformation of the past; and deeply personal approaches to identity, gender and sexuality are some of the themes considered among the 20 longlisted titles for the 40th edition of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, the UK’s leading prize celebrating excellence in photography and moving image publishing. Selected books are those which make original and lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contributions to the field.
* 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards. Since their inception in 1985, the Awards have reflected the changing landscape of photobook and moving image publishing. Past winners include leading figures from the worlds of photography and film including artists and writers such as Isaac Julien; Sunil Gupta; LaToya Ruby Frazier; Zanele Muholi; Edward Burtynsky; Susan Meiselas; Martin Parr; Larry J Schaaf; Mark Haworth-Booth; Griselda Pollock; David Campany; and Simon Callow. To mark the fortieth anniversary, the organiser of the Awards, the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, is planning a range of activities in addition to the annual book awards. Further information on these special events will be updated at
kraszna-krausz.org.uk
* Following the longlist announcement, six shortlisted publications - three in the Photography category and three in the Moving Image category - will be announced in early June 2025. The winner of each category, sharing a £10,000 prize fund, will be announced at the end of June 2025. Events celebrating the 2025 awards and the winners will take place in Autumn 2025. Previous winners’ events have been held in collaboration with the Barbican and the V&A.
* The 20 longlisted publications will be showcased by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation at this year’s Photo London (15-18 May 2025 at P01, East Wing) and at Offprint London (16-18 May 2025).
From A Woman I Once Knew by Rosalind Fox Solomon © Rosalind Fox Solomon
Aisha by
Yumna Al-Arashi (Edition Patrick Frey)
Outside the Binary by
Linda Bournane Engelberth (Self-published)
Crossroads by
Debsuddha (Édition Images Vevey )
In The Dark, The Tides Shine Bright by
Jeano Edwards (Self-published)
A Woman I Once Knew by
Rosalind Fox Solomon (MACK)
Tee A. Corinne: A forest fire between us by
Charlotte Flint (Ed.) (MACK)
Go Home Polish by
Michal Iwanowski (Self-published)
The Dog Sat Where We Parted by
Mahmoud Khattab (Self-published)
The Unruly Archive by
Stephanie Syjuco (Radius Books)
Dame Gulizar and Other Love Stories by
Rebecca Topakian (Blow Up Press)
From Aisha by Yumna Al-Arashi © Yumna Al-Arashi
Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema,mostly by Sam Ashby (Ed.) (SPBH EDITIONS)
Women’s Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia by Esha Niyogi De (University of Illinois Press)
Contemporary Art Cinema Culture in China by Xiang Fan (Bloomsbury Academic)
Directed by Yasujirō Ozu by Shiguéhiko Hasumi (University of California Press)
Screen Deep: How film and TV can solve racism and save the world by Ellen E. Jones (Faber)
Seeing Further by Esther Kinsky (translated by Caroline Schmidt) (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Color in Motion: Chromatic Explorations of Cinema by Jessica Niebel and Sophia Serrano (Eds.) (Academy Museum of Motion Pictures/DelMonico Books)
It's All in the Delivery: Pregnancy in American Film and Television Comedy by Victoria Sturtevant (University of Texas Press)
Crazy Fish Sing by multiple contributors (Yogurt Editions)
The Rebirth of Suspense: Slowness and Atmosphere in Cinema by Rick Warner (Columbia University Press)
For the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards two winning titles are selected annually, with prize money of £10,000 divided equally between the winning title in the Photography category and the winning title in the Moving Image category. Since 1985 the 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).
Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, says of this year’s longlists, “In this 40th anniversary year of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, the number and quality of the entries continue to reflect the high prestige in which the Awards are held. The longlists are as strong and varied as ever.”
From Crossroads by Debsuddha © Debsuddha
Submissions for the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards 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 2024 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. There is no entry fee.
A separate judging panel is in place for each of the Photography and Moving Image awards, made up of three internationally recognised experts in their specialist fields drawn from the worlds of fine art, photography, film, galleries, museums, academia and publishing. In the opinion of the judges, winning books should make 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 2025 Photography Book Award judges are Taous Dahmani, a London-based French, British and Algerian art historian, writer and curator specialising in photography; Dr Sunil Gupta, a British/Canadian London-based photographer whose critical practice focuses on race, migration and queer issues, and the joint winner of the 2021 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award for his book Sunil Gupta: From Here To Eternity, edited by Mark Sealy (Autograph); and Charmaine Toh, Senior Curator of International Art (Photography) at Tate whose research interests include alternative histories of photography and the colonial photographic archive.
The 2025 Moving Image Book Award judges are Dr Kim Knowles, Senior Lecturer in Experimental Film at Aberystwyth University and a curator who was Experimental Film Programmer for the Edinburgh International Film Festival between 2008-2022 and has presented film screenings around the world; Kamila Kuc, a filmmaker and author, and winner of the 2024 British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies Best Screen-Based Practice Research Award for her film, Her Plot of Blue Sky (2023); and Isabel Stevens, a writer, editor and curator, who is the managing editor for Sight and Sound, the international film magazine published by the BFI.
From The Dog Sat Where We Parted by Mahmoud Khattab © Mahmoud Khattab
Charmaine Toh, Senior Curator of International Art (Photography) at Tate and Judge of the 2025 Photography Book Award said of the experience, “It is amazing to see how the genre of photo books continues to grow from strength to strength and how it remains such an important format for photographic practice. The books that left the strongest impressions were those that employed judicious editing and sensitive design to tell their stories.”
Dr Kim Knowles, academic and curator and Judge of the 2025 Moving Image Book Award explained, “I thoroughly enjoyed being part of the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award this year. I was surprised at the diversity of the books submitted and discovered many new approaches and insights along the way! It wasn’t an easy process, as the books differed greatly in size, scope, approach, methodology, style etc. How to judge a tiny book on one film against a huge encyclopaedia of an entire national cinema?! However, I found a way to navigate this by looking for books that offered something unique to the field.”
The call for the 2026 Awards will be issued in November 2025.
Omary, from Outside the Binary by Linda Bournane Engelberth © Linda Bournane Engelberth
