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First Edition Photobook Award, 2018 Award Winners

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The Photography Studies program at Toronto Metropolitan University together with Toronto Metropolitan University Library & Archives is pleased to announce the 2018 recipients of the First Edition Photobook Award:

Book Award Recipients

After Grapefruit, Clea Christakos-Gee
Untitled, Raelene Giffin
In Nocte, Rafaela Conde
In the Water, Lisa McElroy
9869518588, Heather Rattray
Home and Glory, Kalen Huxhan
It’s Good Once You Get There, Hayley Wilsdon

Honourable mentions:

Surface Study, Shaw Quan
Less than 5%, Taya Hampartzoomian
In and of Itself, Lauren Armstrong
Come over sometimes and Other Messages Received and Sent, Leyla Godfrey

After Grapefruit, by Clea Christakos-Gee.
Untitled, by Raelene Giffin.
In Nocte, by Rafaele Conde.
Into the Water, by Lisa McElroy
9869518588, by Heather Rattray 
Home and Glory, by Kalen Huxhan.
It’s Good Once You Get There, by Hayley Wilsdon.

About the Award

As part of MPS507, a 3rd year Toronto Metropolitan University Image Arts class in The Photographic Book, students conceive of, and create their own photobook. This is, in part, related to work that has been completed in the co-requisite class, MPS506 – Photographic Production. These are both required courses for the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Image Arts) Photography Studies Option. Each year, the Library purchases the top photobooks in the class from the creator, as judged by the Special Collections Librarian, Alison Skyrme, and a special invited guest panel (this year Professor Don Snyder, Instructor and Artist Robyn Cumming, and Assistant Professor Dr. Karla McManus). The books are judged at the First Edition Photobook Show – an exhibition of the photobooks at the end of the semester. For evaluation, particular attention is paid to design, sequencing, and integration of images and text. The library catalogues each book, and houses them in the Special Collections department, where they will be available for students and researchers. An exhibition will be held in November to highlight the 2018 winners.

History

The First Edition Photobook Award was established in 2015 by Image Arts instructor Christopher Manson and the Ryerson Library to honour 3rd-year photography students who have made exceptional achievements in photobook production. It provides an incentive for students to achieve the early recognition that will have a lasting legacy in the Library collection.

Previous Award Recipients

The following 2017 award winners were presented with a certificate during the Image Arts Awards Night, November 2017: Adrian Walton-Cordeiro, Ailene Devries, Fehn Foss, Julia Garnet, Feline Gerhardt, Warren Rynkun.

For more information contact: Alison Skyrme.

This year’s books, as well as winners from past years, will be on display in the Hallway exhibition cabinets in front of Archives and Special Collections between November 19, 2019 and January 15, 2019.

2018 Panel

This year we were fortunate to have a judges panel that included Professor Don Snyder, Instructor Robyn Cumming, and Dr. Karla McManus.

Robyn Cumming is a Toronto-based artist and educator. Prior to Ryerson she taught at OCADU and in the Art and Art History Program at U of T/Sheridan. Her current work focuses on representation and accumulation with a recent emphasis on historical images gleaned from Ebay. Robyn was long listed for the 2014 Aimia Photography Prize and is represented by Erin Stump Projects in Toronto. She has a BFA (Honours) from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA from York University.
Karla McManus is an art historian who specializes in the study of photography and the environmental imaginary. Her writing and research focuses on how historic and contemporary concerns, from wildlife conservation, to environmental disasters, to anxiety about the future, are visualized photographically. She received her PhD from Concordia University in 2015 and was a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in Art History and Art Conservation at Queen’s University from 2015-2017.
Don Snyder has an extensive background in photographic history and curation. Before joining the Ryerson faculty, he held an appointment as Curator of Photography at the Addison Gallery of American Art, where he originated the museum’s photography exhibition program. At Ryerson, he established the Image Arts (IMA) Gallery at 80 Spadina Avenue, and was instrumental in the founding of Function, the School’s annual publication of student work, essays and interviews. He has taught in the York-Ryerson Communication and Culture program, and in Ryerson’s graduate programs in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management as well as the Documentary Media MFA program. Particular interests are critical directions in photography and documentary practice during the past decade.