Kraszna-Krausz Foundation

LaToya Ruby Frazier Receives Photography Book Award

The 2020 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Awards goes to US-American photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier for her eponymous book​.

LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier

The Kraszna-Krausz Foundation has announced the winners of the 35th edition of the Photography and Moving Image Book Awards and LaToya Ruby Frazier has been awarded the Photography Book Award for her book​ LaToya Ruby Frazier​ (Mousse Publishing & Mudam Luxembourg).

« 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 » ​— LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier, ‘Grandma Ruby and Me’, 2005, from ​LaToya Ruby Frazier ​(2019).

The annual Awards celebrate outstanding and original publications that will have a lasting impact on their field. In lieu of a physical awards ceremony, the 2020 winning titles will be showcased in a live streamed in-conversation event in partnership with The Photographers’ Gallery on 30th September 2020.

Each winner will receive £5,000 for the Award.

Published to accompany her exhibition at Mudam Luxembourg in 2019, ​LaToya Ruby Frazier includes works from three of Frazier’s major photographic series: ​The Notion of Family (2001–14), On the Making of Steel Genesis: Sandra Gould Ford (2017) ​and And From the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise (2016–17).​ With its commentary on poverty, racial discrimination, post-industrial decline and its human costs, the book leaves a lasting historical legacy and forms a pertinent contemporary commentary about the American condition. The almost magazine-like production values of the book add to this sense of historical ‘first draft’.

 

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