Two Canadian, two Indian photographers shortlisted for $50K Grange Prize

Toronto/Montreal, Sep.2 (ANI): Four photographers - two each from Canada and India - have been shortlisted for The Grange Prize 2011, Canada's largest cashrize for photography.

The winner of the 50,000 dollar prize is chosen by public vote, which opens today and continues through October 23 at www.thegrangeprize.com.

The winner will be announced at a gala reception hosted by presenting partners Aeroplan and the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) on November 1.

The finalists for The Grange Prize 2011 are:

Gauri Gill, an Indian photographer born in 1970 and based in Delhi, whose work documents narratives of ordinary heroism within challenging environments and includes a decade-long study of people living in marginalized communities in Rajasthan.

Elaine Stocki, a Canadian photographer born in 1979 in Winnipeg, who works with subjects from a range of social conditions to create compositions that explore issues of race, class and gender. Her images challenge the limits of documentary photography by utilizing its techniques and conventions to express constructed, fictive narratives.

Althea Thauberger, a Canadian photographer born in 1970 and based in Vancouver, who has garnered attention over the past decade for photographs, films and video that explore her engagements and collaborations with groups of people, most often distinct social enclaves, resulting in performances of identity and self-definition that are strikingly and powerfully documented by the artist.

Nandini Valli, an Indian photographer born in 1976 and based in Chennai, India, whose carefully constructed, cinematic images of her subjects, often costumed as mythologized heroes and gods and photographed in contemporary settings, have placed her at the forefront of the emerging performance-based photography movement in India.

The four finalists were selected by a nominating jury comprising AGO acting curator of Canadian art Michelle Jacques; Wayne Baerwaldt, the acting vice president of research and academic affairs at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. (ANI)