2023 Book Awards

“This nuanced peek behind the curtain at the tender, raw first years of motherhood is a breath of fresh air. Beautifully sequenced and thoughtfully produced, Andi Galdi Vinko’s book handles this important yet underexposed topic with such humour and candour.” Sarah Allen

“From the moment I picked this up, the book gripped me and the subject matter resonated with me.  The photographs taken on large format of mothers and their sons highly representative of the demise of young black men in America at the hands of terror.  Special recognition should be given to the photographer for the hard work of putting this essential body of work together.” Vanley Burke

“Helvécia: A Swiss Colonial History in Brazil is remarkable for the way it tackles a familiar topic – colonial history and attempts at decolonisation, but through an unusual combination of historical narrative, documentary survey, and with both archive and contemporary photography. The contemporary images have tremendous presence, poignancy, and immediacy.” Richard Ovenden

“An original, ambitious, and thought-provoking work about the circulation of film elements and reused and repurposed filmic materials in mid-century Iranian cinema exhibition. Askari takes up Miriam Hansen’s concept of “vernacular modernism” and extends the terrain to a transcultural media archaeology of Iranian exhibition and distribution channels, as he posits a new conception of relay – which allows us to understand the workings, gaps, fissures, and modular units in networks of distribution that moved films between the Global North and the Global South. Gathering and narrating the eclectic mixing of material objects and elements that remain of the archival traces of the film traffic in the region, Relaying Cinema presents a thoroughly new and materially embedded history of filmic circulation.” Elena Gorfinkel

“A rich and fascinating collection of essays by scholars of various disciplines looking at the influence of Islamic cultural traditions on Hindi-language cinema. Admirably well-produced—the reproductions of Mughal-era paintings are gorgeous—and considering a thousand years of history in its 400-plus pages, Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories is a wide-ranging and novel work, a timely reminder of how profoundly Muslim-derived culture in India is imbedded in both Bollywood and the society at large.” Jonathan Ali

“Wow! An incredible 1184-page history including lavish photo galleries in full colour, this well-organised book sits somewhere between encyclopaedia, cultural history, and a detailed, uniquely expressive but always readable account of the (self)-importance of Venice, but also – by default – of all film festivals at a time when their relevance is being questioned by online streaming. Gossipy, OTT, great fun and a great addition to the limited canon of books about film festivals… I loved it.” Jane Giles

“What an incandescent delight this volume is. Published to mark the centenary of Pasolini’s birth last year, it’s a thing of tactile joy that puts his autobiographical poem Poet of the Ashes in conversation with an excellent selection of contemporary filmmakers, whose original, lyrical and even irreverent reflections take the form essays, poems, photographs, drawings and a touching instance of speculative fiction. A beautiful and indelible tribute.” Jonathan Ali

“A stunningly well-produced large format hardback with very high quality images, imaginative use of materials to cover Jennifer West’s career as an experimental artist using film as her plastic medium. The book is very informative, both through elegant captions and a small number of well-written essays which situate her work in the history of art and film, from early silent influences (Loie Fuller) to Hollywood movies, 60s/70s expanded experimenta, via Maya Deren and within a feminist context. Truly impressive.” Jane Giles 

“Uncovering the history of cinematic influence on the Bauhaus, Design in Motion engages with a richly detailed archive that newly narrates the impact of cinema on the thinking and practices of its practitioners. Frahm explores experiments and engagements with film in what she calls its capacity as an elastic “polymedium” and its promise of aesthetics of sequentiality, transparency, movement, iterability, process. Elaborating on the significance of filmic models and experiments in particular to the work of women members of the Bauhaus, as well as pointing to the deployment of celluloid filmstrips materiality, and embeddedness in practices such as textile art and weaving, Design in Motion attests to the centrality of film to the Bauhaus’s re-imagination of twentieth century art and design.” Elena Gorfinkel

“A wonderful book and use of archive materials to compile an illustrated life and works. The format/paper is gorgeous, wonderfully designed, stylish and tactile… I liked the mundane but poignant description of how Rachel approached the task of executor… It’s an amazing price for such a publication with legacy potential for the films, the subject, and the importance of archives.” Jane Giles

“The catalogue of Isaac Julien’s installation on Frederick Douglass, Lessons of the Hour manages to be as magisterial as that ten-screen work. This exquisitely made hardback balances formidable commissioned and existing essays with historical photos and newspaper clippings, stills and installation views, and material on photography and Black subjecthood, appropriate to a work dedicated to the most photographed person of the 19^th century. In every way, shape and form a considerable achievement.” Jonathan Ali

“An illuminating study of how American filmmakers and artists of the 1960s appropriated, manipulated and questioned the “channeled image” of broadcast televisual media in an era of war, social protest, racial and gendered oppression and emancipatory struggle. Moving across works in film, video, installation, performance, happenings, and other moving image practices of artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Emile de Antonio, Stan VanDerBeek, Bruce Conner, Nam Jun Paik, and Aldo Tambellini, this book powerfully articulates the stakes of the mediated, televisual image as a contested site of state power and corporate control. In elegant prose, Erica Levin attends to the gravity and significance of television and mass mediation as central to the development of key avant-garde moving image interventions, and their continuing import for contemporary political urgencies.” Elena Gorfinkel

“What does sleep mean to, for, and in the cinema? Jean Ma takes up the soporific work of Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul as a guiding light through these questions, brilliantly weaving together the unexpected legacies and openings offered by somnolence in the cinema. Complicating debates of passive and active spectatorship in film theory, drawing on aspects of film history and theory that span from early cinema to classical Hollywood, from mid-century photography to expanded cinema and moving image installation, At the Edges of Sleep suggests that sleep’s prism can dynamize how we experience the cinema as art form, enveloping architecture, and ground for embodied collectivities.” Elena Gorfinkel

“Laia’s work is a tour de force of photographic research-based practice. Through text and image, this book lays bare the expansive history of rape across time and place all the while foregrounding the testimony of survivors. At a time when reports of rape and sexual assault continue to emerge in the MET police, the fact this book centres the issue of institutional failure could not feel more relevant and urgent.” Sarah Allen

“I was drawn to this book for its documentation of Northern England, the quality of the images chronicling life in Blackburn and the excellent reproduction of them throughout the book.” Vanley Burke

“This nuanced peek behind the curtain at the tender, raw first years of motherhood is a breath of fresh air. Beautifully sequenced and thoughtfully produced, Andi Galdi Vinko’s book handles this important yet underexposed topic with such humour and candour.” Sarah Allen

“From the moment I picked this up, the book gripped me and the subject matter resonated with me.  The photographs taken on large format of mothers and their sons highly representative of the demise of young black men in America at the hands of terror.  Special recognition should be given to the photographer for the hard work of putting this essential body of work together.” Vanley Burke

“It draws on a topic which is dear to our hearts. It features the greed of international corporations and the effects they have on the lives of people in Nigeria and India and the detriment they cause to their environments and communities.” Vanley Burke

“This book is the product of what Kurland described as a ‘physic spring cleaning’ during which she cut up 150 books by white male artists who have dominated the photographic canon. What results are endlessly fascinating new compositions which deserve to take their place within the rich history of feminist photomontage.” Sarah Allen

“A Stranger in My Mother’s Kitchen is a wonderfully inventive and engaging photobook. It is a poignant look at a personal archive, exploring the idea of memory through images, recipes, and diary and other personal writings. Highly original, personal and moving.” Richard Ovenden

“I was particularly drawn to this book having heard a good deal about FESTAC 77 (the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture) in Lagos.  I found the book compelling as a document of its time.” Vanley Burke

“Helvécia: A Swiss Colonial History in Brazil is remarkable for the way it tackles a familiar topic – colonial history and attempts at decolonisation, but through an unusual combination of historical narrative, documentary survey, and with both archive and contemporary photography. The contemporary images have tremendous presence, poignancy, and immediacy.” Richard Ovenden

“Yelena Yemchuk’s Odesa is a major contender  – really strong and original images, so well put together, and such an important record of a country now devastated by war, through the illegal invasion by Russia.” Richard Ovenden