OTTAWA.- Scotiabank and the National Gallery of Canada announced today the three winners of the 2022 New Generation Photography Award (NGPA), which is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year. Séamus Gallagher of Halifax, NS, Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes of Vancouver, BC, and Clara Lacasse of Montreal, QC are this year’s winners.

Each of the three winners will receive $10,000. Some of their works will be on view at the Scotiabank CONTACT Photo Festival in Toronto, beginning May 1, 2022. A selection of their works will also be featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in the fall of 2022. This exhibition is supported by the Scotiabank Photography Program at the NGC and the National Gallery of Canada Foundation.

Andrea Kunard, Senior Curator, Photographs, at the National Gallery of Canada and Chair of the NGPA jury, is curating both exhibitions. The three artists will also be mentored by the NGC curatorial team.

The jury chaired by Andrea Kunard; and composed of Stephen Waddell, artist and past winner of the Scotiabank Photography Award (2019), Dainesha Nugent-Palache, artist and past winner of the New Generation Photography Award (2021), and artist Isabelle Hayeur, selected the winners from a long list that also included the following nine other lens-based artists:

• Jorian Charlton
• Matt Horseman
• Zainab Hussain
• Tanea Hynes
• Alvin Luong
• Farihah Shah
• Eve Tagny
• Louie Villanueva
• Shellie Zhang

Launched in 2017 by the NGC in partnership with Scotiabank to support the careers of talented Canadian artists aged 35 and under working behind the camera, the New Generation Photography Award recognizes outstanding photographic images by three artists.




“Congratulations to Séamus Gallagher, Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes, and Clara Lacasse, winners of the 2022 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award. We look forward to showcasing their work to the public at the Gallery this fall. For five years we have partnered with Scotiabank on this Award and program, and it is rewarding to see the impact this is having for Canada’s emerging generation of lens-based artists.” —Dr. Sasha Suda, Director and CEO, National Gallery of Canada

“We congratulate the three winners of the 2022 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award and thank our dedicated partners for their continued support of emerging artists in this field. As we consider how art brings together shared realities and explores different perspectives, we are thrilled that we can present this to Canadians at the National Gallery of Canada.”—Lisa Turcotte, Executive Director, National Gallery of Canada Foundation

“Scotiabank is proud to partner with the National Gallery of Canada and support this unique award since its launch in 2017. Since then, we have seen artists share and present deeply inspiring and creative works, not just on Canadian shores but internationally as well. Scotiabank has a passion for supporting the arts and we believe the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award provides a critical and unique opportunity to help foster the successful careers of young artists. Congratulations to the 2022 winners Séamus, Marisa and Clara. We look forward to seeing your work at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa this fall.” --Laura Curtis Ferrera, Chief Marketing Officer, Scotiabank

“The 2022 winners of the New Generation Photography Award explore the many challenges in contemporary representations of identity, culture and the environment. A common preoccupation is the protean nature of the photographic image—its capacity to reveal and conceal and find disparate sometimes contradictory applications. Works tease at the boundaries of authenticity and artifice, desire and actuality, the natural and constructed. Artists celebrate visual excess with an eye to questioning what such abundance communicates. With great visual sophistication, thoughtfulness and curiosity, the NGPA winners probe shared concerns and anxieties, always mindful of their own role in supplementing an already visually saturated culture.”—Andrea Kunard, Senior Curator, Photographs, at the NGC and Chair of the NGPA jury, is curating both exhibitions.

Séamus Gallagher is a non-binary photo and new media artist currently based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). They graduated from NSCAD University with a double major in Photography and Expanded Media (BFA 2019). Their work has shown in festivals/exhibitions across Canada, as well as in Germany, England, Switzerland and Los Angeles. They are the recipient of the 2017 AGO | AIMIA Photography Scholarship, the 2018 NSCAD Student Awards, and the 2019 BMO 1st Art! Awards. They were also recently longlisted for the 2019 and 2021 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Awards. Since 2019, Gallagher has worked in partnership with IOTA Institute.

Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes studied photography at Emily Carr University but often works fondly with sculpture and music. Winner of the 2017 Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, Holmes has a solid exhibition record, which includes solo, public and group exhibitions. Her practice is the product of looking closely at, and being attentive to, the ways in which people create and share digital images. Her most recent works are photographs she has taken of objects in the style of second-hand selling/shopping overlaid with altered seating plans of concert halls and auditoriums in Hong Kong.

Clara Lacasse is inspired by the construction of narratives related to history, nature, science and the collective imagination. Through work focused on the photographic image, she supports a critical reflection on the representations generated by visual culture and on the image as an instrument of knowledge and power. She holds a BFA with a major in photography from Concordia University. In 2019, she participated in a research-creation residency in Fermont as part of the programming of the artist-run centre PANACHE art actuel (Sept-Îles) and was the recipient of a development grant awarded by VU, centre de diffusion et de production de la photographie (Québec).