“The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a medium via which messages reach us from another world,” Orson Welles.

In 1985, the publisher and photographic writer Andor Kraszna-Krausz established the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards to celebrate and reward excellence in photography and moving image publishing. A philanthropic act that this year sees the Awards mark its 40th anniversary – 40 years that represent not just a roll call of the great and the good in these fields but the huge shift in how photography, and to a somewhat lesser extent moving image, has come to be regarded culturally, with the rise of the photo book playing no small part in this.

For these past 40 years, the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, aided by an annually changing judging panel, have recognised individuals or groups of individuals that have made an outstanding original or lasting contribution to the art and practice of photography or the moving image through the medium of the book. Two winning titles are selected: one in the field of photography and one in the field of the moving image, including film, television, and digital media.

Since their inception in 1985, the Awards have reflected the rapidly changing landscape of photobook and moving image publishing. They have recognised 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, RaMell Ross, Mark Haworth-Booth, Griselda Pollock, David Campany, and Simon Callow.

The 40th anniversary Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards 2025 winners are for photography, Mahmoud Khattab for his deeply personal self-published book, The Dog Sat Where We Parted, documenting the otherwise unseen military life of his enforced year of Egyptian national service as an army doctor in 2017, and the feelings of intense loneliness he experienced as a soldier; and for moving image, Ellen E. Jones wins for her book, Screen Deep: How film and TV can solve racism and save the world, which examines the immense potential of screen storytelling to defeat an evil both historic and urgently topical: racism. Both titles reflect the innovation and diversity of subject matter taken from the hundreds of submissions, which itself underlines the continued and ever-growing dynamism and demand in moving image and photography publishing.

Both of the winners will be at celebratory events in London about their work.  Moving image winner Ellen E. Jones will be in conversation with Rhianna Dhillon following a special screening of the 1959 film ‘Imitation of Life’ at the Barbican on Monday, 27 October. The 2025 photography award winner, Mahmoud Khattab, alongside shortlistees Charlotte Flint and Linda Bournane Engelberth, will be presenting their books in a symposium at the V&A, South Kensington, on 19 November.

To further mark the anniversary, the Foundation had displays showcasing this year’s longlisted books alongside a range of Focal Press publications spanning the 1930s-1980s at Photo London and at the Offprint independent publishing fair at Tate Modern in May 2025. The Foundation is also reviving its grant-giving strand, working with the London College of Communication to enable two students from the photography department and film school to undertake new book projects.

Photographic historian, Dr Michael Pritchard, has been commissioned to undertake a research project looking at Andor Kraszna-Krausz’s early life in Hungary, the development of his career in Germany and subsequently the UK, and the establishment of his hugely successful publishing house, Focal Press. Dr Pritchard will be presenting an illustrated lecture at the Liszt Institute, the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London, on 2 December.

Information and booking for all of these events can be found here.

While those involved in photography and moving image books are ever evolving and pushing the boundaries of their titles, to understand the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards and the impact it has had both now and historically, is to understand its origins.  The Hungarian-born founder, Andor Kraszna-Krausz (1904 – 1989), or KK to his friends, dedicated his life to making photography accessible to the world. Studying photography and cinematography at Munich University before embarking on a career in publishing in Germany, like many working in publishing at this time, KK emigrated from Germany, arriving in Britain in 1937 as a refugee. After unsuccessful attempts to work in London publishing houses, KK set up his own. A year later, in 1938, KK founded Focal Press, an influential specialist publishing house for books on photography. Focal Press publications were an immediate success, gaining a reputation for clear yet authoritative text and illustrations, making photography comprehensible to the masses at a time when the expert use of the still camera was still shrouded in technical mystery. During KK’s lifetime, Focal Press published 1,200 books, selling a remarkable 50 million copies to amateurs and professionals alike. It is now the world’s leading publisher of books about photography, film, and television.

Four years before his death in 1989, KK set up the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation and donated his valuable collection of books on photography and the audio-visual media to the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, where there is now a reading room in his name. His work was everything to him, and it was to his work, and to the continued pursuance of his vision, that he left his estate.

For the past 40 years, the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards has been the leading UK prize celebrating those who use photography and moving image publishing to make public subjects that may otherwise remain hidden or overlooked. Using the medium of the book as an investigative tool as much as a camera, the Awards looks forward to a continued future of innovation and wonder at the world. In the words of KK himself, “One’s own past is a mere continuation and extension of the past of others. One is only a link in a chain, never a complete beginning nor – let us hope – the end of it all.” The call for the 2026 Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards will be issued in November 2025.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Trenerry has worked with photographers for the past two decades and is committed to making art and culture accessible to all.