Four finalists for the 2016 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize were announced this morning. Elizabeth Zvonar (Canada), Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (Germany), Jimmy Robert (France) and Talia Chetrit (USA) are in the running for the $50,000 prize, which is decided by a public vote.
An exhibition of work by the finalists, curated by the AGO’s Adelina Vlas, will open on September 7 at the AGO in Toronto.
“The four nominated artists for this year’s Aimia | AGO Photography Prize all work with photography in singular ways, each of which embodies a current mode in contemporary art,” said Vlas in a press release. “The strength of their work and the diversity of their approaches will make for a unique exhibition inviting visitors to appreciate, reflect on, and participate in the visual culture of our time.”
A jury, consisting of internationally renowned Vancouver artist Stan Douglas, AGO curator Kitty Scott, and American art scholar Russell Ferguson, selected the four finalists from a longlist of 23 artists.
Past winners of the prize include Canadians Erin Shirreff, Sarah Anne Johnson and Kristan Horton, as well as Americans Dave Jordano and Lisa Oppenheim, and UK artist Jo Longhurst.
Elizabeth Zvonar, Join the Resistance, 2015. Collage print on photo-rag mounted on dibond.
Elizabeth Zvonar
Based in Vancouver, Elizabeth Zvonar blends collage, sculpture and photography. Pulling from “fashion magazines to art history and science textbooks,” Zvonar’s works “explore the conflicting meanings that exist within Western media.” She has had exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery’s offsite space, Gallery 295 and Western Front in Vancouver, and Daniel Faria Gallery in Toronto.
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Chagan. Kazakhstan. Airfield shelters of nuclear test site, 2012. Gelatin silver print.
Ursula Schulz-Dornburg
Based Dusseldorf, Schulz-Dornburg was was born 1938 in Berlin. Schulz-Dornburg’s work focuses on the intersections between people and architecture, particularly houses, and she has “travelled from the secret village of Kurchatov, Kazakhstan to the Hejaz railway in Saudi Arabia, from Kronstadt, Russia to Armenia and the border of Georgia and Azerbaijan to Iraq and Syria” to photograph these structures. She has recently shown in exhibitions at the Tate Modern in London and Giorgio Mastinu Gallery in Venice.
Jimmy Robert, Untitled (Fragments), 2015. Archival inkjet print, oak frame. Courtesy Tanya Leighton, Berlin.
Jimmy Robert
Born in Guadeloupe in 1975, Robert currently lives and works in Bucharest. Far from strictly a photographer, Robert’s work includes performance, photography, film, video and drawing. Within this interdisciplinary work, “Robert typically uses photography as a starting point for his works on paper, breaking down the divisions between two and three dimensions, as well as image and object,” says the prize’s press release. His solo exhibition “Draw the Line” was presented at the Power Plant in Toronto in 2013.
Talia Chetrit,Brother (Sunglasses), 1995/2013. Silver gelatin print.
Talia Chetrit
Born in Washington, DC, in 1982, Chetrit now lives and works in New York. With a practice that often focuses on the human body, and “the relationship the camera has with the subject matter it documents,” Chetrit has shown in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Sculpture Center in New York, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Studio Voltaire in London and LACMA in Los Angeles.
