The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation's 2017 Book awards

After an open call for submission an international panel of leading photography professionals, including Martin Barnes (Senior Curator, Photographs, V&A), selected a shortlist of six impressive nominations from which Provoke and Anatomy of Sound were the final winners. The foundation awards prize money of £10,000 divided between both books

Best Photography Book
Provoke: Between Protest and Performance by Diane Dafour, Matthew Witkovsky, Duncan Forbes eds. (Steidl)
The Tokyo magazine Provoke was short-lived, existing only for three issues over the nine months November 1968 - August 1969. It is, however, widely recognized as a major achievement in world photography of the postwar era, uniting the country's most contentious examples of protest photography, vanguard fine art, and critical theory of the late 1960s and early 70s in only three issues overall. With powerful images, interviews and essays this book accompanies the first exhibition ever to be held about the magazine and its creators, focussing on its historical context.

Best Moving Image Books
Anatomy of Sound: Norman Corwin and Media Authorship by Jacob Smith and Neil Verman, eds. (University of California Press)
his collection examines the work of Norman Corwin as a critical lens to view the history of multimedia authorship and sound production. Corwin is most famous for his radio dramas, which reached millions of listeners around the world and contributed to radio's success as a mass media form in the 1930s and 1940s. Exploring the range of Corwin's work and its influence on media today, these essays underscore the political and social impact of Corwin's oeuvre and cement his reputation as a key writer in the history of many sound media.

About The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation
The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation was created by Andor Kraszna-Krausz, the founder of Focal Press. Since 1985 the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book Awards have been the UK’s leading prizes for books on photography and the moving image. Winning books have been those which make original and lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contributions to the field. In addition to the Book Awards, the Foundation contributes to the National Media Museum First Book Award, in partnership with MACK. The recipient of this prize works alongside MACK to realise a monographic book project of previously unpublished work.

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation's 2017 Book awards

Virginia Hanusik: Into the Quiet and the Light

By Virginia Hanusik

Publisher : Columbia Books on Architecture and the City

2024 | 184 pages

In South Louisiana, where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico, water―and the history of controlling it―is omnipresent. Into the Quiet and the Light: Water, Life, and Land Loss in South Louisiana glimpses the vulnerabilities and possibilities of living on the water during an ongoing climate catastrophe and the fallout of the fossil fuel industry―past, present, and future. The book sustains our physical, mental, and emotional connections to these landscapes through a collection of photographs by Virginia Hanusik. Framing the architecture and infrastructure of South Louisiana with both distance and intimacy, introspection and expansiveness, this work engages new memories, microhistories, anecdotes, and insights from scholars, artists, activists, and practitioners working in the region. Unfolding alongside and in dialogue with Hanusik’s photographs, these reflections soberly and hopefully populate images of South Louisiana’s built and natural environments, opening up multiple pathways that defy singularity and complicate the disaster-oriented imagery often associated with the region and its people. In staging these meditations on water, life, and land loss, this book invites readers to join both Hanusik and the contributors in reading multiplicity into South Louisiana’s water-ruled landscapes.

With texts from Richie Blink, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Jessica Dandridge, Rebecca Elliott, Michael Esealuka, T. Mayheart Dardar, Billy Fleming, Andy Horowitz, Arthur Johnson, Louis Michot, Nini Nguyen, Kate Orff, Jessi Parfait, Amy Stelly, Jonathan Tate, Aaron Turner, and John Verdin.

Rawsht Twana: Twana’s Box

By Rawsht Twana

Publisher : Fraglich Publishing

2024 | 252 pages

Twana’s Box' can be described in many ways: a journey through a photographer’s rare archive, documenting the Kurdistan region of Iraq from 1974–1992; a son’s quest to find his lost father, who was murdered by a military regime; a young man’s way to piece together the fragments of a scattered family in a scattered culture; the becoming of a photographer who, through the stories of others, starts to understand his own identity in times of war. 'Twana’s Box' is not only the photo book that holds a selection of Twana Abdullah’s archive; it is a unique insight into a time and place in a region that has since completely transformed. Rawsht has spent years piecing together his father’s negatives and stories. His archival work inspired him to become a photographer himself, working for Metrography – the first independent Iraqi photo agency – before immigrating to Europe. ills colour & bw, 21 x 27 cm, hb, Kurdish/Arabic/English

Akinbode Akinbiyi: Being, Seeing, Wandering

By Akinbode Akinbiyi

Publisher : Spector Books

2024 | 252 pages

Taken across Europe and Africa, Akinbiyi’s images of everyday city life muse on the sociopolitical labyrinths of urban society

Whether in Bamako, Berlin, London, Lagos or Durban, British photographer Akinbode Akinbiyi (born 1946) creates black-and-white street scenes that function as visual metaphors, ruminating on cultural change, social exclusion and colonialism’s effect on urban planning.

Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm

By Grace Wales Bonner

Publisher : The Museum of Modern Art, New York

2024 | 184 pages

A deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression, curated by the acclaimed London-based designer
This volume, Grace Wales Bonner: Dream in the Rhythm―Visions of Sound and Spirit in the MoMA Collection, is an artist’s book created by the acclaimed London-based designer Grace Wales Bonner as “an archive of soulful expression.” Through an extraordinary selection of nearly 80 works from The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and archives, this unique volume draws multisensory connections between pictures and poems, music and performance, hearing and touch, gestures and vibrations, and bodies in motion. Photographs, scores and films by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Mark Bradford, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, David Hammons, Glenn Ligon, Steve McQueen, Lorna Simpson and Ming Smith, among others, are juxtaposed with signal texts by Black authors spanning the past century, including Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, June Jordan, Robin Coste Lewis, Ishmael Reed, Greg Tate, Jean Toomer, Quincy Troupe and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Artist’s Choice: Grace Wales Bonner―Spirit Movers, this resplendent publication is a deeply personal meditation on and around modern Black expression that echoes Wales Bonner’s own vibrant, virtuosic designs.

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation's 2017 Book awards

Kraszna-Krausz Foundation

Selected Books