It’s second time lucky for Angela Grauerholz. The veteran Montreal-based photographer, perhaps most famous for her large, gauzy, almost monochromatic prints, has been named the winner of the 2015 Scotiabank Photography Award, at $50,000 one of the richest purses for achievement in the visual arts. The Hamburg-born Grauerholz, a Governor-General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts laureate last year, had been nominated for the SPA in 2013 but lost to Vancouver’s Stan Douglas.
Grauderholz, 63, was honoured at a SPA reception Wednesday evening in Toronto as part of the city’s annual month-long Contact photography festival. She’s the fifth winner of the juried prize, created by Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky and Jane Nokes, Scotiabank director of arts, culture and heritage, to recognize cumulative excellence in contemporary photography.
Besides Douglas, previous SPA honorees have been Lynne Cohen, Arnaud Maggs and Mark Ruwedel.
A Montreal resident since the mid-1970s, Grauerholz prevailed over two other finalists – fellow Montrealer Isabelle Hayeur, 46, and Torontonian Rafael Goldchain, 62 – to take the SPA. Besides the cash, she will get a book-length survey of her work published by the distinguished German art imprint Steidl as well as a solo exhibition in spring 2016 at the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto. Hayeur and Goldchain each receive $10,000 as runners-up.
In a statement Wednesday, Burtynksy said Grauerholz “has been consistently building a body of work that evokes, place, memory and archives time past and present. Many of her images feel as if they were plucked from a dream.”
Grauerholz, Goldchain and Hayeur were named SPA finalists in early March by a jury of three: Nova Scotia College of Art and Design professor/curator Robert Bean; Catherine Bédard, art historian/deputy director of the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris; Robert Enright, University of Guelph professor and senior contributing editor to Border Crossings magazine.