This is the second in a series of annual publications published by Steidl celebrating the winner of the Scotiabank Photography Award, Canada's largest contemporary photography award for an established Canadian artist. Scotiabank is a leader among Canadian corporations and is recognized internationally for its charitable donations and philanthropic activities. The award was established by photographer Edward Burtynsky and Jane Nokes of Scotiabank. Arnaud Maggs demonstrates the range of this year's winner's oeuvre with 17 series including Joseph Beuys, 100 Profile Views (1980); Kunstakademie (1980); André Kertész, 144 Views (1980); Hotel (1991); Répertoire (1997); Contamination (2007); The Dada Portraits (2010) and his most recent series After Nadar (2012). Together they convey current theories related to the study of the history of photography, which stress the importance of using first generation objects as research tools to re-examine history. Arnaud Maggs brings viewers face to face with books, ephemera and portrait studies, skilfully photographed, re-presented and gracefully shared with us as works of fine art.

Arnaud Maggs

Arts & Photography

Individual Artists

Steidl/Scotiabank

This volume is the third annual publication celebrating the winner of the Scotiabank Photography Award, Canada's largest contemporary photography award for an established Canadian artist. Photography has played a vital role in Stan Douglas' artistic development. This publication highlights the significance of the photographic image in the critical and historical reception of Douglas' approach to art and media. The stories, sites and events that Douglas explores are populist, literate and timely. His photographs frequently describe the overlooked histories of cultural identity, displacement and injustice that reveal an uncanny resemblance to present-day events. This is achieved through an insightful attention to photography as both medium and subject. Folding the spectator into the visual culture of memory and oblivion that photographs evoke initiates profound observations about the ubiquity of photography in contemporary culture. The photographs of Stan Douglas affirm the validity and volatility of the photographic medium at this decisive moment in the history of art and photography.

Stan Douglas

History & Criticism

Over the past three decades, Mark Ruwedel (born 1954) has examined the intersections of representation, cultural memory and shifting perceptions of space. His work is an epic account of North American civilization, extending from topologies of urban architecture to large-scale projects such as The Ice Age and Westward the Course of Empire. Ruwedel represents landscape as a site where radically different scales of time intertwine. Picturing the earth as an enormous historical archive, he describes his work as "an inquiry into the histories, cultural and natural, of places that reveal the land as both a field of human endeavor and an agent of historical processes." Ruwedel spotlights traces of human activity―whether an ancient footpath in Death Valley or a rotting wooden trestle abandoned after the failure of the Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railroad―in relation to geographic and geological upheavals that have shaped the earth's surface.

Mark Ruwedel

Arnold, Grant

Photography & Video

The photographs of Angela Grauerholz (born 1952) are filled with people, glimpses of public and private interiors, and ethereal rural and urban landscapes. Their out-of-focus quality transforms them into a stream of consciousness―“a representation of our experience: a continuous prodding into something that escapes us continuously.”

Angela Grauerholz

This book presents Detroit-born, Toronto-based artist Suzy Lake’s (born 1947) bold explorations of gender and identity. Along with her expansive use of the photographic medium, these concerns make Lake an exemplary model for contemporary artists. Combining a deep knowledge of photographic conventions with strong personal convictions, she produces work that both inspires and provokes thought. Beauty at a Proper Distance/In Song (2001–2), for example, challenges notions of beauty and the aging body in a society that glorifies youth. Lake installed light boxes in public places depicting highly saturated close-up images of her face. In Performing Haute Couture (2014), she modeled high fashion designed for much younger models to celebrate her maturity and authority. In Reduced Performing (2008) she utilized the most sophisticated scanning technology available to scan the entire length of her body. The questions Lake raises are as relevant now, in the age of social media, as ever before.

Suzy Lake

Ontario-based Native American photographer Shelley Niro is widely known for her ability to explode myths, transgress boundaries and embody the ethos of her matriarchal culture in a wide variety of mediums, including photography, installation, film and painting. Niro creates photographic series that emphasize the medium’s inherent capacity for narrative and representation. She pushes the limits of photography by incorporating Mohawk imagery, reappropriating traditional stories such as Skywoman and The Peacemaker, and by focusing on contemporary subjects with wit, irony and campy humor.
Niro marries portraiture, performance art and satire by having her subjects and herself perform for the camera in ways that gently invite audiences to rethink their beliefs and preconceptions about indigenous peoples and themselves. With compassion and deep insight, Niro opens up the fault lines and desires of gender, sexuality and culture to create images of freedom from the status quo in representation.

Shelley Niro: Scotiabank Award

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