A still from New York–based Canadian artist Moyra Davey’s work Hemlock Forest (2016).
This morning, three Canadian artists were announced as being shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Photography Award.
They are: New York-based artist Moyra Davey, Toronto-based Haudenosaunee artist Greg Staats and Vancouver-based artist Stephen Waddell.
The award winner, to be announced on May 8, will receive a $50,000 cash prize, an exhibition at the Ryerson Image Centre during the 2019 Contact Photography Festival, and a book of their work published by Steidl. Overall, the award aims to recognize the achievements of established mid-to-late-career photo-based artists.
Davey, born in Toronto in 1958, is known for photo- and video-based works (often shot in her New York home) that address family, friends, philosophy and personal narratives. Her work has been exhibited at Documenta 14, the Guggenheim and the Met, among other venues, and she is also editor of the landmark Mother Reader anthology.
Staats, born in Brantford in 1963, is renowned for, as the Art Gallery of Ontario articulates it, “photography, performance, video installation, and sculpture” that currently aims at “reconnecting with a traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) restorative aesthetic.” For his installation at last year’s Capture Photo Festival in Vancouver, untitled (objects of reciprocal thinking), Staats brought “together images and objects from personal and community archives that offer intellectual and aesthetic interpretation of body and ceremony.”
Waddell, born in 1968 in Vancouver, started out as a painter but has more recently become known for varied bodies of work in photography. While his breakthrough works were colour images of urban spaces and people in those spaces, his acclaimed 2016 exhibition “Dark Matter Atlas” at the Vancouver Art Gallery featured huge black-and-white prints of underground caverns in the United States, Canada and Lebanon.
The award is peer-reviewed. This year’s jurors include artist Edward Burtynsky (jury chair), writer/curator Candice Hopkins, Vox artistic director Marie-Josée Jean, and artist Mark Lewis.
“These artists and their bodies of work are representative of the excellence and diversity of Canadian contemporary photography—powerful, fascinating and uniquely impactful,” said Burtynsky in a release.
Past winners of the prize include Shelley Niro, Suzy Lake, Mark Ruwedel, Stan Douglas and Lynne Cohen.
This post was updated on March 21, 2018, with more information about each of the nominated artists.
