Vancouver-based photo artist Owen Kydd is among the four finalists for the 2015 Aimia/AGO Photography Prize, it was announced Tuesday in Toronto. Started in 2008 and originally known as the Grange Prize, the Aimia/AGO, honouring excellence in contemporary photography and related fields, awards $50,000 annually to a winner who is decided by public vote.
The finalists – besides Kydd, 36, include two Berlin-based artists, Annette Kelm, 36, and Hito Steyerl, 49, and Chicagoan Dave Jordano, 67 – were chosen by a jury of three, headed by Art Gallery of Ontario associate curator Adelina Vlas, from a long list of 27 international artists named in late April.
Until 2013, finalists for the prize were split between two Canadians and two artists from a so-called “partner country.” Those partner countries have included, in different years, China, Mexico, India, the United States and Britain. In 2013, it was decided to make it a truly international honour, with a long list of photographers and photo-based artists chosen by a panel of curators from around the world. Now the only “nationalist” stipulation is that one of the four finalists has to be Canadian. In the past seven years, three winners have been Canadian.
The actual works by the finalists will be exhibited at the AGO, starting Sept. 9, then as an online iteration Sept. 15 at AimiaAGOPhotographyPrize.com. Voting can be done in-person at the gallery or online until Nov. 29, with the winner announced Dec. 1. Last year more than 20,000 people voted.
Each runner-up receives $5,000, while $25,000 is allocated to a national scholarship program for students studying fine-art photography at 15 participating postsecondary institutions in Canada. Another roughly $20,000 in Aimia/AGO money goes toward funding six-week residencies in Canada for each of the four finalists.
In a statement, Vlas said she and her fellow jurors – João Ribas, deputy director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto, Portugal, and Paris-based photographer Mohamed Bourouissa – “were drawn to these four finalists for the distinctive visual force and rigour of their work but also for the ways they each address historical and philosophical questions about image-making today.”
The Calgary-born Kydd, a former studio assistant to Jeff Wall, has become known internationally for his “durational photography” – meditations on the boundaries between video and photography, the documentary and the pictorial in which short, silent, often slow-moving video loops are shown on framed, wall-mounted monitors.
Jordano is an acclaimed documentarian, particularly known for his sympathetic portraits of life in his hometown of Detroit. Kelm’s large colour prints display “a research-based interest in cultural history and the history of photography” while Steyerl’s complicated practice often involves high-definition video essays combining voiceover and montage with interviews and narrative structures.
Editor's note: Juror João Ribas was misidentified in the original version of this story.