Impressed By Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 by Roger Taylor.
A new photographic research book written by Roger Taylor has won the prestigious Kraszna-Krausz Book Award 2008.
Press Release:
A photography book by a Leicester professor, which accompanies an internationally acclaimed exhibition currently touring the world, has won the prestigious Kraszna-Krausz Book Award.
Over the past 14 years Roger Taylor, Professor of Photographic History at De Montfort University, has gathered a unique collection of British calotypes - works of exceptional beauty and rarity made from paper negatives - from the beginnings of photographic art.
His ground-breaking book about the collection and the photographers behind them, Impressed By Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (Yale University Press), was one of six books across the world short-listed for the awards.
They are the UK's leading prize for books published in the fields of the moving image and photography, with a total prize fund of £10,000 split between the winners of the two categories in the awards; moving image titles and the photography category.
The winners were announced at the London Book Fair on Monday (14 April).
Prof Taylor's ground-breaking exhibition of some of the calotypes was launched at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art last year and is currently at The National Gallery of Art in Washington DC and will go to the Musee D'Orsay in Paris next month.
The exhibition presents 118 works by 40 artists, including masters like William Henry Fox Talbot, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Roger Fenton, Benjamin Brecknell Turner, and Linnaeus Tripe, as well as unrecognised artists.
Most of the works to be featured have never been exhibited before and are loaned from 27 public and private collections in the UK, France, Canada, and the US.
Dr Gerard Moran, Dean of Art & Design at DMU, said: "The Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award is the most prestigious in the field and it's very fitting that it should go to De Montfort University's Professor Roger Taylor."
"He is a major figure in the development of Photographic History both here in the UK and internationally - as the recent exhibitions he has curated in New York and Washington demonstrate. Roger has been at the centre of exciting research in the surprisingly under-documented area of British photographic history - and this personal recognition for his excellent book is a most appropriate tribute."
Prof Paul Hill, course leader for the University's renowned Photography Masters degree, said: "This is like the Booker Prize for Photography and it's a wonderful accolade for a brilliant piece of internationally-praised work."
Prof Taylor's book will now join the Kraszna-Krausz collection of photography and moving-image books held in the National Media Museum in Bradford.
The awards recognise and celebrate excellence in photography and moving image publishing and were founded in 1985 by the prolific and dedicated Hungarian-born Andor Kraszna-Krausz, who was also founder of Focal Press.