2025 Finalists
"It is an honor to recognize this year’s Scotiabank Photography Award finalists— Emmanuelle Léonard ,Dawit L. Petros, and Greg Staats—three artists whose work exemplifies the power of photography as a medium for critical inquiry and profound storytelling. Emmanuelle Léonard’s incisive lens captures the complexities of labor, surveillance, and public space, inviting us to reconsider the structures that shape our daily lives. Dawit L. Petros challenges historical erasures and examines the enduring impacts of colonialism, creating layered visual narratives that resonate across geographies. Greg Staats weaves Indigenous methodologies and personal history into a deeply poetic practice that speaks to memory, loss, and renewal. Their work expands the boundaries of photographic practice and enriches our collective understanding of the world. Congratulations to all three finalists on this well-deserved recognition."
- Ed Burtynsky, Jury Chair, Scotiabank Photography Award
Emmanuelle Léonard
Born in 1971 in Montreal where she resides and practices, Emmanuelle Léonard holds a bachelor’s degree from Concordia University (1997) and a master’s degree from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2002). The artist has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, OPTICA gallery, VOX gallery, Mois de la Photo, Montreal, at Le Fresnoy, France, Kunsthaus Dresden and at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Germany, in South Korea during the Daegu Photo Biennale; the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto at Mercer Union and at Gallery 44, Toronto; Glassbox, Paris; L’OEil de poisson, Quebec City, at Centre VU, Quebec City, etc. In 2019, she presented a solo exhibition at Galerie de l'UQAM, under the curation of Louise Déry, accompanied by a catalogue. In 2023 The Deployment was presented as a solo exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris.
She did artist residencies at the Villa Arson, France, the Christoph Merian Foundation, Switzerland, and at the Finnish Artist Residency Foundation. In 2018, she completed an artist residency in Bogota, Colombia, and one in Resolute Bay in the High Arctic, with the Canadian Forces Artists Program. She was awarded the Prix Pierre-Ayot in 2005. In 2012, she exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto as part of the International Grange Prize for which she was a nominee. In 2020, she was one of three finalists for the Scotiabank Photography Award. She is represented by the Ellephant gallery, Montreal.
Her work is exhibited at the Collection Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario Collection, Collection Loto-Québec, Collection Desjardins d’oeuvres d'art, Collection d’oeuvres d’art de l’UQAM, Collection Caisse de dépôt du Québec, Collection de la Ville de Montréal, Collection Prêt d’oeuvres d’art, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.
Dawit L. Petros
Dawit L. Petros is an artist and educator whose works span photographic installations, moving images, sculptural objects, and sound. Petros holds an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a BFA in Photography from Concordia University, and a BFA in History from the University of Saskatchewan. He also completed the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York.
Greg Staats
Greg Staats is Skarù:reˀ [Tuscarora] / Kanien’kehá:ka [Mohawk], Hodinöhsö:ni’. b. 1963, Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. A Toronto based artist whose Hodinöhsö:ni restorative aesthetic employs mnemonics of condolence, articulated in visual forms that hold body and place including: oral transmission, text works, embodied wampum, photographic, sculpture, installation and video. Staats exists in the liminal space of transistion inherent with the body, land, and memory. Staats' practice conceptualizes Land as monument embodied within a continuum of relational placemaking with his on-reserve lived experience, trauma, and the explorations of ceremonial orality.
Staats’ lens based language documents cycles of return towards a complete Onkwehón:we neha [our original ways] positionality, reciprocity and worldview.
Staats, active as an artist since 1981, studied Applied Photography at Sheridan College. He is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Staats’ works are held in public, private, and corporate collections. Residencies include: AGO, Open Studio, the Banff Centre, AGYU, TSV, and University of Waterloo Longhouse Labs Staats has been awarded the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Inaugural Indigenous Artist Award (2021), and the 2024 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.