2019 Book Awards

Zanele Muholi has been awarded the Photography Book Award 2019 for their striking monograph Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness published by Aperture.

Muholi’s publication presents a series of bold self-portraits that are timely and relevant statements on race, gender and identity. The book features over ninety photographs, each image drafted from material props in Muholi’s immediate environment. These portraits reflect the journey, self-image, and possibilities of a black woman in today’s global society. A powerfully arresting collection of work, Muholi’s radical statements of identity are a direct response to contemporary and historical racisms. As Muholi states, “I am producing this photographic document to encourage individuals in my community to be brave enough to occupy spaces—brave enough to create without fear of being vilified. . . . To teach people about our history, to rethink what history is all about, to reclaim it for ourselves—to encourage people to use artistic tools such as cameras as weapons to fight back.”

“Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness is a powerful statement of resistance, and as such this book has an enduring presence that will be enjoyed by future generations.”
— Anne McNeill, 2019 Photography Book Award Judge

Zanele Muholi (born in Umlazi, South Africa, 1972) is a visual activist and photographer, cofounder of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, and founder of Inkanyiso, a forum for queer and visual media. Muholi has won numerous awards for their work, including France’s prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2018); the ICP Infinity Award for Documentary and Photojournalism (2016); the Fine Prize for an emerging artist at the 2013 Carnegie International; a Prince Claus Award (2013); and both the Casa África award for best female photographer and a Fondation Blachère award at Les Rencontres de Bamako biennial of African photography (2009). Their Faces and Phases series was shownat dOCUMENTA (13) and the 55th Venice Biennale and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2015. Muholi is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany. They are represented by Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York.

_{Click on the image to view pages from the book and from the 2019 Awards ceremony.}

Jane Giles is named the winner of the Best Moving Image Book Award 2019 for her book Scala Cinema 1978 – 1993 published by FAB Press and made possible by crowdfunding.

Giles first started going to London’s Scala Cinema at the age of 17 and went on to become the Programme Manager. The Scala showed avant garde films and retrospectives alongside edgier new releases and films destined to become cult favourites; it also did triple bills so the customer could saturate themselves in film. With the rise of the multiplex this kind of cinema has sadly declined, so this is a reminder that there are other models as well as a memento of a lost original. Each weekly programme is reproduced in order and in full colour throughout, providing an archive of research for scholars too.The book is a monument to the cinema, with a richly researched account of what it was like to run the place month-in month-out as well as a reflection on the wider social history of the time through the prism of film programming.

“A really sumptuous treat to see and hold, first of all, as well as a painstaking effort to commemorate an important cultural landmark.”
— Dr Tamar Jeffers McDonald, 2019 Moving Image Book Award Judge

Click on the image to view pages from the book and from the 2019 Awards ceremony.