The archive, both historic and personal with questions of authorship and authenticity, dominates the themes of the longlisted titles for the 2026 edition of the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards, the UK’s leading prize celebrating excellence in photography and moving image publishing. In addition, deeply personal approaches to race, representation, identity, and sexuality; notions of ‘the other’; and the preservation and transformation of the past feature. Selected books are those which make original and lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contributions to the field.
The longlisted publications will be showcased by the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation at this year’s Photo London (13-17 May 2026 - Booth P20, Publishers’ Section, National Hall, Level 1, Kensington Olympia, London) and POST, Brighton (3-5 July 2026). Following the longlist announcement, shortlisted publications will be announced in early June 2026. The winner of each category, sharing a £10,000 prize fund, will be announced at the end of June 2026. Events celebrating the 2026 Awards and the winners will take place in autumn 2026 in London at the Barbican and the V&A, South Kensington.
For the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards two winning titles are selected annually, with prize money of £10,000 divided equally between the winning title in the Photography category and the winning title in the Moving Image category. Since 1985 the Awards have recognised individuals who have made an outstanding original or lasting educational, professional, historical and cultural contribution to literature concerning photography or the moving image (including film, television, video, and new media). Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE, Chair of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, says of the 2026 longlists, “It is a huge pleasure to be announcing such outstanding works in our two sets of long-listed books this year, evidence that the production of excellent books on photography and the moving image is alive and well.”
Since their inception in 1985, the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards have reflected the changing landscape of photobook and moving image publishing. Past winners include 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; Mark Haworth-Booth; Griselda Pollock; David Campany and Simon Callow.
The Longlisted Titles for the 2026 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award are:
- A Reprise by David Alekhuogie (Aperture)
- Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain, edited by Renée Mussai (Thames & Hudson/ Autograph)
- Index2025 by Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (Roma Publications)
- It’s Hard To Stop Rebels That Time Travel by Raymond Thompson Jr (Void)
- MAN by Erik Kessels and Karel De Mulder (RVB Books)
- Red Horse by Sasha Kurmaz (Éditions Images Vevey)
- Sound the Sirens by Bryan Anselm (Overlapse)
- Swan Moon’s Swan Moon by Swan Moon (TBW Books)
- The Fold by Hoda Afshar (Loose Joints)
- The Ramble NYC 1969 by Arthur Tress (Stanley / Barker)
- The Weight of the Word by Piero Martinello and Piero Casentini (Fw:Books)
- Too Many Products Too Much Pressure by Janet Delaney (Deadbeat Club)
The Longlisted Titles for the 2026 Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award are:
- Cosmosexuals: Screen Acting, Stardom, & Male Sex Appeal by Mark Gallagher (University of Texas Press)
- Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System by Katherine Fusco (Columbia University Press)
- June Givanni: The Making of a Pan-African Cinema Archive by Onyeka Igwe (Lawrence Wishart)
- Out There in the Dark by Katharine Coldiron (Autofocus Books)
- Read Frame Type Film: Or, Written on the Screen by Enrico Camporesi, Catherine de Smet, and Philippe Millot (MUBI Editions)
- Shaping Global Cultures Through Screenwriting: Women Who Write Our Worlds edited by Rose Ferrell and Rosanne Welch (Intellect)
- The Animist Imagination in East Asian Cinema by Pao-chen Tang (Amsterdam University Press/ Routledge)
- Toward a More Perfect Rebellion: Multiracial Media Activism Made in L.A. by Josslyn Jeanine Luckett (University of California Press)
- Transnational Cinema Solidarity: Chilean Exile Film and Video after 1973 by José Miguel Palacios (University of California Press)
- Understanding Video Activism on Social Media by Jens Eder; Britta Hartmann; and Chris Tedjasukmana (Intellect)
Fiona Rogers, the V&A Parasol Foundation Curator of Women in Photography and Judge of the 2026 Photography Book Award, said of the experience, “We were extremely impressed by the originality of the books submitted for this year’s KK book awards. The selection exemplifies the expansive nature of contemporary photographic practice and represents how visual culture impacts us all. It is inspiring to see so many varied approaches to portraiture, documentary, and the use of historical documents and archives as artistic, reparative interventions.”
David Martin-Jones, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Glasgow, and Judge of the 2026 Moving Image Book Award, explained, “The longlist expresses the great variety of books submitted. Both in terms of the different writing styles and approaches to the moving image, and, the great diversity of films currently being explored. The longlist celebrates works exploring filmmaking from all around the world, including dedicated works on African, Asian and Latin American cinemas; larger and smaller screens; more canonical films and those passed over or at risk of being “forgotten” by the canon; and most of all, the timeliness of so much scholarship on the audiovisual for our complex era. What the longlist shows, in a nutshell, is how important moving images are for how we process our relationship with the world.”
The call for the 2027 Awards will be issued in November 2026.
Image: from Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain, edited by Renée Mussai (Thames & Hudson/ Autograph)
