Header photo © LaToya Ruby Frazier: Grandma Ruby and Me, 2005

Yesterday, the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation announced the two winners of its annual Photography and Moving Image Book Awards, selecting from short and long lists that were revealed in July. The prizes have been awarded to two very different, both very worthy winners.

The Photography Book Award was won by Chicago-based artist LaToya Ruby Frazier for her eponymous book LaToya Ruby Frazier (Mousse Publishing & Mudam Luxembourg), which collates a series of three photographic projects commenting on racial discrimination, poverty, post-industrial decline and its human costs. The images are both reflective and poignant and provide a compelling visual documentation of sections of society today.

Photos © LaToya Ruby Frazier: Left: Sandra Gould Ford in her office in Homewood PA, 2017
Right: Mr Yerby and Mom’s Foot, 2005, gelatin silver print, Pinault Collection

Talking about her work, LaToya Ruby Frazier says, “In my photographs, I make social commentary about urgent issues I see in the communities or places I’m in. I use them as a platform to advocate for social justice and as a means to create visibility for people who are on the margins, who are deemed “unworthy”: the poor, the elderly, the working class, and anyone who doesn’t have a voice. I create depictions of their humanity that call for equity. That is what is dear to my practice and my position as an artist.”

Photo © LaToya Ruby Frazier: Ali wearing his miner’s helmet,
coal mines of Louis Lambert, Hensies, Borinage, 13 December 2016

The Moving Image Book Award has been posthumously awarded to Hannah Frank for Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons (University of California Press), in which Frank takes a look at the enormity of detail required to produce cartoons in the pre-digital age, offering an insight into the complexities of animation and its history.

Left: Cruella de Vil in 101 Dalmatians (Disney 1951)
Right: Cinderella’s stepmother in Cinderella (Disney 1950)

Dr Andrew Moore, one of the judges said, “This is an exceptional book: original, poignant, hugely significant and full of verve, with writing that is wry, neat and seductive. Hannah Frank’s obsessive focus on the single cell in animation calls on us to change our way of perceiving culture. Her intellectual range is astonishing: Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, André Bazin, Walter Benjamin, Sergei Eisenstein – all are invoked to get us to think about what animation is, and to forcibly remind us of the invisible factory labour that manufactured the polished, animated commodity. Hannah Frank has given us a perfectly crystalised intellectual project.”

Popeye – Moving Image Figure 3.2 Frames from Olive Oyl’s dance in Blow Me Down!
(Dave Fleischer 1933)

As restrictions on social gatherings continue, there will not be a physical awards ceremony this year, however, the Photographers’ Gallery will be hosting a free digital event on 30th September which will include a showcase of the works and artist/editor talks and is open to the public – click through on the link for more information and booking details (donations are welcome to support the gallery’s public programme).

The judges for this year’s Photography Book Award were Professor Elizabeth Edwards, visual and historical anthropologist and independent scholar; Peter Fraser, contemporary British photographer; and Shoair Mavlian, Director of Photoworks.

The judges of this year’s Moving Image Book Award were Melanie Hoyes, Industry Inclusion Executive, BFI; Geoffrey Macnab, author, and contributor to Screen International and The Independent; and Dr Andrew Moor, Reader in Cinema History, Manchester Metropolitan University.

You can find more details about the awards on the Kraszna-Krausz website.

Words by Siobhan
Images reproduced with permission via Flint Culture and copyrighted as detailed

10th September 2020