2023 Nominees

Scotiabank Photography Award

The 2023 Scotiabank Photography Award Nominees represent the result of an annual Canada-wide search for excellence. The Scotiabank Photography Award is peer-reviewed at every stage of the nomination and adjudication process and nominees must meet eligibility criteria.

Lorna Bauer

Lorna Bauer is a Montreal based artist working in photography and sculpture. Her work examines human’s relationships to their surroundings, projects are characterized as site related and speak to a material investigation into ideas and experiences generated from ecologies of lived environments. Bauer’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions in Canada and abroad: the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, the Darling Foundry (Montreal), Franz Kaka (Toronto), Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, (Athens). Her works are present in public and private collections, notably the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. In 2019 Bauer was awarded the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award for Canadian photography, in 2021 she was a finalist for the Sobey Art Award representing Quebec. She is currently the Artist in Residence at Concordia University in Studio Arts. 

Nominated by Ji-Yoon Han.

Sandra Brewster

Sandra Brewster is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. Her themes focus on identity and representation, and movement in the image of portraiture through the depiction of gesture. She uses landscapes as metaphors and manipulates old photographs to centre the people in them. Born to Guyanese parentage, she is especially interested in the experiences of Caribbean communities and their relationships with back home. Recent exhibitions include Musée d’art Rouyn-Noranda (2023), Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2022–23), The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2022), Les Rencontres d’Arles (2022), and Or Gallery, Vancouver (2019). Her public sculpture A Place to Put Your Things is on view at Harbourfront Centre, Toronto.

Nominated by Sunny Kerr.

Geneviève Cadieux

An influential figure in Canada, Geneviève Cadieux constructs poignant photographic works and large-scale installations that test the limits of the medium while addressing the themes of the human body and the landscape in their mutual implication. Critically acclaimed and the focus of numerous exhibitions Cadieux has represented Canada at the Venice Biennale and participated in prestigious events, such as the 59th Minute: Video Art, Times Square, NY, the Sao Paolo Biennale, the Sidney Biennale. Solo shows include, the ICA, London, the Nouveau-Musée de Villeurbane, the M HKA Anvers, the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, the Sagacho Exhibit Space, Tokyo, the Musée Départmental de Rochechouart, France, the Tate Gallery, London, the Miami Art Museum, the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Arts, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, the Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, the Americas Society, NY and the National Gallery of Canada.

Nominated by Sarah Milroy.

Chris Curreri

Chris Curreri is a Canadian artist who works with photography and sculpture. His work is premised on the idea that things in the world are not defined by essential properties, but rather by the actual relationships that we establish with them. Recent exhibitions include: A Surrogate, A Proxy, A Stand-In, Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Kingston); Thick Skull, Thin Skin, Esker Foundation (Calgary); The Way We Are 2.0, Weserburg museum für moderne Kunst (Bremen); Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life, Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart); and 2017 Canadian Biennial, National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa). His work is included in the collections of: Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and the National Gallery of Canada. He holds an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College.

Nominated by Shauna Thompson.

Rosalie Favell

Rosalie Favell (born 1958) is a revered artist with a creative practice that spans over 40 years. Through photography and painting, Favell merges aspects of her Metis heritage, family history, and elements of popular culture to explore her lived experience as a Metis 2SLGBTQ woman. Numerous institutions have acquired her artwork including the Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth), Indigenous Art Centre (Gatineau), the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.). Favell has won prestigious awards such as the Karsh Award and the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award, and received an Honorary Doctorate from OCAD U. She exhibits nationally and internationally, and is a sought-after advisor, speaker, teacher, and writer.

Nominated by Kari Cwynar.


Ken Lum

Lum is co-founder and founding editor of the Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. He is a prolific writer with numerous essays and reviews in academic and non-academic publications. A book of his writings titled Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life 1991 – 2018 was published in 2020 by Concordia University Press. Lum has worked on numerous major permanent public art commissions and has a substantial record of curatorial work. Lum is the co-founder and Senior Curatorial Advisor to Monument Lab, a public art and history thinktank.

Nominated by Camille Georgeson-Usher.


Krista Belle Stewart

Krista Belle Stewart is a citizen of the Syilx Nation currently based in Berlin and Vienna. Stewart works primarily with video, photography, sculpture, and performance, drawing out personal and political narratives inherent in archival materials while questioning their articulation in institutional histories. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim, Neuenhaus (2022); Goethe Institut Seattle, WA (2021); MOCA, Toronto (2020); Nanaimo Art Gallery, BC (2019); and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2019) and in recent group exhibitions including the 58th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2022); 39th Eva International, Limerick (2021); Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2020); and CTM Festival, Berlin (2020). She is an MFA graduate from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY, and is presently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria.

Nominated by Jayne Wilkinson.

Ned Pratt

Ned Pratt (b. 1964), who lives on the island of Newfoundland where he was born and has spent most of his life, holds a BFA in photography from NSCAD University (1990), and a BA in art history from Acadia University (1986). His his first solo exhibition of large format photographs, entitled New Photography, was held at Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s, in 2008. His photography has been exhibited at the former Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, PREFIX Photo, the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, and in Oh, Canada organized by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2018, Pratt’s first touring survey exhibition, One Wave, curated by Mireille Eagan, opened at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in 2018. The exhibition was accompanied with a major publication. Pratt holds the 2017 Large Year Award from Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador. He is represented by Christina Parker Gallery in St. John’s, and by Nicholas Metivier Gallery in Toronto.

Nominated by Tom Smart.