Scotiabank Photography Award: Clara Gutsche
Main Gallery
May 7–August 2, 2025
Curator: Gaëlle Morel
This exhibition celebrates Clara Gutsche, winner of the 2024 Scotiabank Photography Award, whose work captures human presence through their environment. Since the 1970s, she has documented traces of urban life across Canada, the United States, and Western Europe—from parkscapes and shop windows to industrial ruins. Her staged portraits—set in convents, schools, and family homes—explore identity, relationships, and the passage of time. Spanning both black-and-white and color photography, Gutsche’s images challenge documentary traditions, blending observation with deliberate composition. From decaying factories to intimate family moments, her “photographs about photography” reflect a deep and enduring engagement with the medium’s material, formal, and memorial qualities.
Curator: Gaëlle Morel
Related Programming
Public Opening Reception
Wednesday, May 7, 2025 | 6-8pm
Artist Talk: Clara Gutsche
Thursday, May 8 | 7pm
Special Exhibition Tour: SPA: Clara Gutsche (Gaëlle Morel)
Wednesday, July 2 | 6pm
Clara Gutsche, Les Sœurs Adoratrices du Précieux-Sang, Nicolet, 1995, chromogenic print. Courtesy of the artist.
Clara Gutsche, Collège Clarétain, Victoriaville, 1997, chromogenic print. Courtesy of the artist.
Artist Biography
Clara Gutsche (Canadian, b. American, 1949) studied visual arts at Concordia University, Montreal (MFA, 1986). A co-founder of the artist-run centre Powerhouse Gallery/La Centrale in Montreal (1973), she has also been an educator, teaching photography at Champlain College, Saint-Lambert and Concordia University. In the 1980s, along with her husband and frequent collaborator David Miller, she was awarded two major commissions from the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA), documenting the Lachine Canal and the construction of the CCA’s museum building.
Gutsche’s photographs have been presented in solo and group exhibitions at Optica, Montreal; VU, Quebec City; Château d’Eau, Toulouse, France; Musée de la photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona; and the Musée d’art de Joliette, Quebec. Her work can be found in the collections of The Image Centre; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Musée de la photographie, Charleroi, Belgium; and the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona. In 1997 she was the recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography.
