2021 Barbara Spohr Award Recipients Announced

Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is pleased to announce Anna Binta Diallo and Logan MacDonald as the recipients of the 2020/21 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award.

Created by the friends and family of the late artist Barbara Spohr, the biennial award provides Canadian artists working in photography with a prize of $6000 CAD in value towards a residency in Visual Arts at Banff Centre.

Anna Binta Diallo's work investigates memory and nostalgia to create unexpected narratives surrounding identity. With the Barbara Spohr Award, Anna Binta will further develop the project Voyageur / Almanac: an exploration of the connections between human life, nature, and our ecological surroundings, through imaginative visual storytelling with photographic media.

"I am honored to be one of the recipients of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award. This is a celebratory moment in which I am reminded of the importance of support in the Arts. We live in a moment where we need imaginative storytelling as much as ever, the kind of artistic expressions that can help us understand the complexities of our coexistence. I will follow these guiding principles as I conduct the research and exploration that this award has afforded me the opportunity to do, many thanks to the Banff Centre for its recognition and support, and to artists like Barbara Spohr who continue to nurture creativity with their legacy."

Logan MacDonald's work examines the visual imagery of colonial and dominant historic narratives, in an attempt to confront and subvert them. With the Barbara Spohr Award, Logan aims to explore 19th century photographic portraiture of Indigenous peoples, and in particular, the utopic landscape backdrops placed behind subjects regardless of distinctions between individuals, communities, or territory.

"I'm deeply honoured to be receiving a Barbara Spohr Award. Like Spohr, my practice has progressively become more lens-based as I've matured as an artist. For this I am filled with gratitude, to be connected to such an important legacy. This award enables me an opportunity to develop a new body of work reflecting on backdrops that set the stage for early portraiture photography."

Recent winners of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award include: Laurie Kang (2018), Lorna Bauer (2018), Elise Rasmussen (2016), Colin Miner (2013), Celia Perrin Sidarous (2011), Maegan Hill-Carroll (2009), Ramona Ramlochland (2007), Justin Waddell (2005), Dianne Bos (2005) and David McMillan (2004), among others.

Open to artists who have attended Visual Arts residency programs in the previous two years, the award is intended to encourage the development of Canadian contemporary photography by providing financial assistance to an artist whose work has the potential to make a significant contribution to the field.

Learn more about Visual Arts residencies at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Walter Phillips Gallery.