And/Or Book Awards shortlists

  

MEDIA RELEASE COURTESY OF: AND/OR BOOK AWARDS

2010 And/or Book Awards shortlists have been announced for a £10,000 shared prize fund.

The shortlists are 2009’s best books on photography and the moving image. Subjects of the books include: the life story of rebel Hollywood director Hal Ashby, a contemplation on our dependence on oil, memoirs of the influential New Yorker Theater and a survey of Japanese photographic print culture.

The two shortlists are announced for the 2010 And/or Book Awards, the UK’s leading prizes for books published in the fields of photography and the moving image. A winner from each category will share a prize fund of £10,000. They will be announced during an awards ceremony at the BFI Southbank, London, on Thursday 29 April.

The shortlisted titles for the Best Photography Book are:

Oil by Edward Burtynsky (Steidl)

Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans by Robert Frank, edited by Sarah Greenough (Steidl)

Paul Graham by Paul Graham (Steidl)

Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and '70s by Ryūichi Kaneko and Ivan Vartanian (Aperture Foundation)

The shortlisted titles for the Best Moving Image Book are:

- The Tactile Eye by Jennifer M. Barker (University of California Press)

- Being Hal Ashby: The Life of a Hollywood Rebel by Nick Dawson (The University Press of Kentucky)

- Eisenstein on the Audiovisual by Robert Robertson (I. B. Tauris)

- The New Yorker Theater by Toby Talbot (Columbia University Press)

- Michael Haneke's Cinema by Catherine Wheatley (Berghahn Books)

Over 150 titles were submitted across the two categories for the awards, which have been narrowed down to a final nine books by the two judging panels chaired by Philippe Garner (Photography) and Francine Stock (Moving Image). The judges were looking for clearly written, well illustrated works, which make a significant contribution to the understanding of photography and/or the moving image.

The photography shortlist includes: an essay by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, chronicling the infrastructure of the oil industry and the implications of our dependence on the fuel; an expanded re-issue of legendary photographer Robert Frank’s seminal work The Americans; a retrospective of Paul Graham, the pioneering UK photographer and winner of the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009; a survey of the Japanese photographic print culture of the 60s and 70s, which has since had a profound influence on photographic publishing worldwide.

Philippe Garner comments: “The field was strong and the excellent shortlist reflects a wide range of approaches. They include: single-minded and engaging investigations of sometimes very narrow topics, made riveting by the passion of the authors; excellent monographs on or by photographers from all areas of photographic practice; and a number of quirky, category-defying projects."

The moving image shortlist includes: Jennifer M. Barker’s theory that the connection between film and viewer goes beyond the visual and aural, to become something visceral; a portrait of the life of the underappreciated rebel 1970s Hollywood Director, Hal Ashby; Robert Robertson’s revealing exploration of Eisenstein's ideas about the audiovisual in cinema; memoirs by Toby Talbot, co-owner of Manhattan's influential home of art-house film, the New Yorker Theatre; the first English language analysis of the films of Austrian Director, Michael Haneke, by UK film critic Catherine Wheatley.

Francine Stock comments: "The books that impressed us above all were the ones that inspired a deeper love of film. The shortlisted authors each combined passion and original research in a format that suited their subject. Whether it was intimate memoir, biography, history, critique or a call for a radical new understanding of the way we experience cinema, these books were both focussed and involving."

For more information please visit the And/Or Book Award website here.