2006 CDS / Honickman First Book Prize in Photography Winner
Danny Wilcox Frazier
Driftless: Photographs from Iowa
Danny Wilcox Frazier, a freelance photographer and filmmaker, grew up in Le Claire, Iowa, and has a master's degree from the University of Iowa. He also teaches at the University of Iowa.
The 2006 biennial prizewinner, Danny was selected from four hundred entries in the third First Book Prize competition. His black-and-white images of rural Iowa explores the changing Midwest rural landscape. This area which was once synonymous with thriving farmlands and openness, is now being replaced with deserted farmhouses and emptiness.
Robert Frank, one of America's most important and influential photographers, judged the competition and chose Frazier for the prize because of his "passionate photographs without sentimentality…his work reaches out: let me tell your story, it is important."
Driftless documents "the numerous aspects of rural culture that would otherwise be forgotten.... The project explores themes of: out-migration, rural poverty, immigration, substance abuse, religion, traditional lifestyles, and issues of the elderly."
Frazier has received grants and prizes from the Aftermath Project, Humanities Iowa, POYi, the National Press Photographers Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, and Chinese International Press Photo. He is also a two-time finalist for the W. Eugene Smith Grant.
Danny's images have appeared in such publications as the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Life, Fortune, U.S. News & World Report, and Forbes, and he is a contributing photographer for Mother Jones and CR magazine. His assignments have taken him all over the world.
Photographs from his book Driftless have been exhibited and screened widely, and in 2010, Frazier's film version of Driftless, produced by MediaStorm's Brian Storm, won a Webby Award and was nominated for an Emmy Award in the New Approaches to News & Documentary Programming: Current News Coverage category.
He is represented by Redux Pictures.