Kraszna-Krauzs shortlists anounced
Three photography books have been shortlisted for the 2011 Kraszna-Krausz award, alongside four nominees in the Best Moving Image Book category.
Formerly known as And/or Book Award, the annual prize has gone back to its original title, honouring the name of its founder. Andor Kraszna-Krausz has moved to Britain before the war and set up the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and Focal Press publishing house in 1985. For the past 26 years, the awards have been granted to the books on photography and moving image for the most original and lasting contribution to the field. Initially, Kraszna-Krausz Book Award has been a scholarship for either historical or technical achievements, however, one of the award judges and past recipients David Campany says it is about to change, as “over the past few years, the judges have interpreted it more broadly,” looking at photo books as an art form.
From the trio shortlisted by the jury chaired by Mary McCartney jointly with David Campany and Yuka Yamaji, two books saw the world in 2010. American photographer John Gossage has been making photo books for nearly 30 years, and his latest two-volume project The Thirty Two Inch Ruler / Map of Babylon published by Steidl is a photographic observation of a suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington where Gossage lives. Executing the project through the cycle of seasons, Gossage choose to shoot his images on bright, clear days, presenting a utopian picture of the area. Commenting on the book content, David Campany says Gossage’s “handling of editing and sequencing was second to none.”
Mark Haworth-Booth’s account of the nineteenth-century photographer Camille Silvy was published by the National Portrait Gallery to mark a century of the photographer’s death and concurred with the first retrospective of his work in Paris and London. Historian and photographic curator, Haworth-Booth presents a combination of a visual retrospective that includes some previously-unseen materials with an in-depth analysis of the work, making Camille Silvy: Photographer of Modern Life 1834-1910 a valuable contribution to the history of the medium.
A duo-edition, TJ: Johannesburg Photographs 1948-2010 / Double Negative: A Novel is a collaborative project from South-African photographer David Goldblatt and writer Ivan Vladislaviċ. Published by Contrasto, the title saw the world in 2011. Pairing photography and vision in the “elaborately bound volume”, the book explores the complex relations between image and text.
In addition, a number of books received a special mention from the jury panel. Among those recommended for an exhibition is Mark Power’s documentation of contemporary Poland – The Sound of Two Songs, Alixandra Fazzina’s photographs of refugees from civil war-torn Somalia – A Million Shilling – Escape from Somalia, a new edition of William Klein’s book Life is Good & Good for You in New York and others.
David Campany claims, “the number of photographic books published is going up with every year,” as “people are rediscovering this art form.” He admits, “this puts a certain pressure on the prize,” but “the high number of good submissions [makes it] an exciting thing to judge.” In Campany’s opinion, a rise of digital imaging has been “an advantage for book publishing,” making people more appreciative of a photograph printed on a page.
The jury member also emphasises the crossover between the two award categories, giving an example of a catalogue of Muybridge’s work that has been recommended by the Moving Image Books category judges, saying that, “if they didn’t put it on their list, we would probably get it on ours.” Campany also comments on his own Moving Image Book award-winning book Photography and Cinema (Reaktion, 2008), saying “when they called me about the nomination, I was not sure which category am I in.”
The winners in both categories, as well as a new Lifetime Achievement Award for excellence in Photography and/or Moving Image Publishing, will be announced on the 27 April at the Sony World Photography Awards at the Odeon Leicester Square. In addition to the £10,000 prize to be shared between the two winners, Kraszna-Krausz Foundation offers “small grants to assist in development and completion of new or unfinished projects in the field of photography and/or moving image.”
Written for the BJP.
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