Non-photographer wins $50,000 photography prize

Toronto artist Kristan Horton has won the $50,000 Grange Prize, Canada’s biggest photography award, but ask the bearded artist about the medium and he gets a little sheepish. “I have no formal training in photography,” Horton admits in a video on the prize’s Web site. “In fact, I never considered myself a photographer.”

Horton studied fine art at the University of Guelph and then at OCAD and has an expansive portfolio that includes sculpture, drawing, photography and video. The pieces submitted to the Grange competition range from digitally layered collages to stills of arranged household objects. He describes his first encounters with photography as “probably the same as most people—documentation,” but also says that lately he’s “come closer to photography as a medium, something I’m using every single day.”

Horton beat out Canadian Moyra Davey and Americans Josh Brand and Leslie Hewitt to take home the top prize. All four finalists took non-traditional approaches to photography, altering film or manipulating and building images to create the final artwork. The winner was decided by a public on-line vote, and the work of all four artists will be on display at the AGO until January 2, before travelling to the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.
• Kristan Horton [The Grange Prize]
•  Toronto’s Kristan Horton wins $50,000 Grange Prize for photography [National Post]
•  Toronto’s Kristan Horton wins Grange Prize [CBC]