Scotiabank Photography Award
At Scotiabank, we are proud to play a role in celebrating the creative vision and accomplishments of our country’s most gifted photographers.
At Scotiabank, we are proud to play a role in celebrating the creative vision and accomplishments of our country’s most gifted photographers.
Scotiabank Photography Award
The Scotiabank Photography Award is Canada’s largest and most prestigious annual peer-nominated and peer-reviewed award that acknowledges the outstanding contribution that our winners have made to contemporary art and photography. These are artists who strive to invent, influence and redefine the reception of art in ways that will endure. The Scotiabank Photography Award winner exhibition is a featured primary exhibition co-curated by Paul Roth & Gaëlle Morel at the Toronto Image Centre Photography Festival. The winner also receives a $50,000 cash prize and a book of their work published and distributed worldwide.
The Award was co- founded in 2010, by Edward Burtynsky, internationally-renowned Canadian photo artist and Chair of the Scotiabank Photography Award jury, and Scotiabank to strengthen Scotiabank’s commitment to the Arts in Canada.
Scotiabank Photography Award Books
Each year, the winner is honored with a book featuring their photos, created by Barr Gilmore and distributed internationally.
Barr Gilmore is a Toronto/Algonquin Highlands-based designer, artist and unapologetic dreamer/optimist. He graduated with a BFA in sculpture and printmaking from UBC (1987; Head of the Graduating Class in Fine Arts); was the Studio Assistant to the renowned Canadian art collective General Idea (1991–1995); a Senior Design Associate at Bruce Mau Design (1996–2005) and former Professor/Coordinator of Integrated Design at the Haliburton School of Art + Design (2014–2023)—a unique diploma program that he designed, to better prepare students of art, craft and design for the 21st century.
Barr completed his MDes in the Interdisciplinary Masters in Art Media and Design graduate program at OCADU in 2011, for which he won the prestigious Governor General's Academic Gold Medal—the first in OCADU’s history.
His book and exhibition designs for an international client base, including Gagosian Gallery, TIFF Bell Lightbox, and the Scotiabank Photography Awards, have won numerous awards; and in 2009, he was inducted into the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts for graphic design.
His small window gallery, Solo Exhibition (2000–2005) opened with the slogan, “One window. One artist. One artwork. Every full moon ’til the next one. Always open.” He curated over fifty local, national, and international artists/artworks into that space.
Barr Gilmore is Barr Gilmore Art + Design (2005 to present) and partner in The SON, a new art and healing start-up, that he is creating with his life partner, Pierre Antoine Alexandre. His pursuit of love and art never ends.