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 during the CONTACT Photography Festival. The winner also receives a $50,000 cash prize and a book of their work published and distributed worldwide by Steidl of Germany.

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 has a long-standing history of celebrating the importance of photography in Canada and around the world. In 1976, we established the Scotiabank Fine Art Collection and today the collection continues to acquire the work of renowned Canadian photographers, including the work of some of our past Scotiabank Photography Award winners.