Finalists for the Scotiabank Photography Award, left to right: Mark Ruwedel, Rodney Graham, and Donald Weber.
Pioneering photo-conceptualist Rodney Graham, 65, has been nominated for the 2014 Scotiabank Photography Award.
The Vancouver-based artist, often spoken of in the same breath as fellow Vancouverites Jeff Wall and Stan Douglas (last year's SPA winner), will be one of three lensmen vying for the $50,000 prize, honouring excellence in contemporary photographic practice.
The other nominees, announced Tuesday in Toronto, are Pennsylvania-born landscape photographer Mark Ruwedel, who came to Montreal's Concordia University in the early 1980s, and Toronto-based documentarian Donald Weber.
The winner of the juried prize, now in its fourth year, will be announced April 29 at the start of the month-long CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto. Besides the $50,000 purse, one of Canada's richest art prizes, the winner will have a book of his photographs published by Germany's Steidl press and a solo exhibition in 2015 at the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto.
In addition to Stan Douglas, previous SPA laureates are Montreal's Lynne Cohen (2011) and the late Arnaud Maggs of Toronto (2012).