World's Largest Photography Fest Gets New Title
The world's largest photography festival has a new partnership with Scotiabank as the event's title sponsor. Scotiabank and CONTACT announced the Toronto festival's renaming to Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival earlier today, and introduced the Scotiabank Photography Award for 2011.
"At Scotiabank, we pride ourselves on our commitment to art, culture and heritage in the communities where we live and work here in Toronto, across Canada and around the world, and art is a key area of focus for us," said Scotiabank President and CEO Rick Waugh. "We are very proud to assume title sponsorship of this year's festival, after several years of sponsoring the primary exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art and featuring photography in our own Banking Hall throughout the month-long festival."
The Scotiabank Photography Award will be the largest photography award dedicated to recognizing Canadian contemporary artists working in photography. Launching in September 2010 and to be awarded in 2011, the award will consist of a $50,000 cash prize, a pre-negotiated book publishing contract by internationally acclaimed photographic art publisher, Steidl, and a feature exhibition in the following year's Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. World renowned Canadian photographer Ed Burtynsky will chair a panel of three judges for the award in 2011.
"Canadian photography has reached a level that deserves to be recognized here in Canada, after all, photography - like all visual art - is about communication," said Jane Nokes, Scotiabank Director of Corporate Archives and Fine Art. "Through the Scotiabank Photography Award, we are helping engage Canadians in the photographic art scene and reward outstanding photographers for their contributions, and further support their careers."
Beyond title sponsorship and photography award, the Scotiabank Photography Festival will invite the public to enter an online contest to win a limited edition print by Ed Burtynsky from the Australian Mines series. Starting April 1st and throughout the month-long festival, the public can enter at www.scotiabankcontactphoto.com.
In 2009, the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival was sponsored by the likes of HP, Silk, Flickr, Myspace, Blackberry, Heineken and Scotiabank, among others.
