Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity Announces Ryan Van Der Hout as Winner of the 2026 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award
Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
September 11, 2025
https://www.banffcentre.ca/articles/visual-arts/banff-centre-arts-and-creativity-announces-ryan-van-der-hout-winner-2026
The annual award at Banff Centre recognizes a mid-career Canadian artist whose practice advances the field of contemporary photography. This prize includes a fully funded month-long, self-directed residency at Banff Centre's Leighton Artist Studios, valued at over $7,000 CAD.
BANFF, AB, SEPTEMBER 11, 2025 – Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity is proud to announce Ryan Van Der Hout (he/they) as the 2026 recipient of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award for Photography, facilitated through the Leighton Artist Studios program. Established by the friends and family of the late Canadian photographer Barbara Spohr, the annual prize is intended to encourage the ongoing development of contemporary photography in Canada.
An interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Canada, working across photography, public art, and sculpture, Van Der Hout investigates transformation through fragmentation and reflection, using glass and mirrors as both material and metaphor for queer experience and becoming. Their innovative integration of photographic imagery into three-dimensional objects and installations challenges how we see ourselves and our environment, inviting audiences to witness how breaking and reassembly can reveal new possibilities.
Represented by United Contemporary and Oeno Gallery, Van Der Hout has exhibited internationally across Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Their work has been widely featured in publications including Time Out NY, The Huffington Post, Vogue Italia, Fortune Magazine, Reader's Digest, CBC, and NBC News. They have also created public art projects for NYC Parks, the City of Toronto, and Nuit Blanche.
"After losing access to analog colour darkrooms over a decade ago, receiving the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award feels like a true homecoming to the foundational materials that first shaped my understanding of photography. I'm incredibly excited to be creating work surrounded by Banff's deep geological time while returning to these essential processes—light, glass, and photographic paper." — Ryan Van Der Hout
Van Der Hout will be in residence from January 19 to February 13, 2026, with 24-hour access to the Crich Studio, a Leighton Artist Studio equipped with private analogue darkroom facilities. In addition to accessing digital photographic production resources and support from Banff Centre's photography facilitator, the award provides meals, accommodation with an honorarium at CARFAC-based rates. The jury selected Van Der Hout for this opportunity in recognition of their "exceptional critical, creative, and technical rigor."
During the residency, Banff Centre will present a free public artist talk with Van Der Hout on February 6, 2026, from 4-5:30 p.m. in the Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building at Banff Centre. In this talk, they will discuss their broader practice and current investigations into the intersection of geological and human time, integrating analog darkroom processes with stained glass techniques to create new works that collapse temporal scales into unified forms.
This event is presented in partnership with Exposure Photography Festival and made possible through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Government of Canada, Government of Alberta, and the friends and family of Barbara Spohr.
"We're honoured to welcome Ryan Van Der Hout as the 2026 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award recipient at Leighton Artist Studios. Their work transforms photography into a sculptural, reflective practice. With Banff's darkroom facilities and surrounding landscape, this residency offers an ideal setting to deepen their exploration of material, identity, and time." — Karen Howard, Senior Manager, Leighton Studios and Self-Directed Residencies at Banff Centre
Formerly a biennial prize, the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award became an annual award in 2025. Applications are open to Canadian mid-career photo-based artists with a strong record of accomplishment, supporting those focused on creating new works, developing specific projects, or researching innovative ideas.
The most recent recipient of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award was Karen Zalamea (2025). Past recipients include Anna Binta Diallo and Logan MacDonald (2021), Lotus L. Kang (2018), Lorna Bauer (2018), Elise Rasmussen (2016), Colin Miner (2013), Celia Perrin Sidarous (2011), Maegan Hill-Carroll (2009), Ramona Ramlochland (2007), Justin Waddell (2005), Dianne Bos (2005) and David McMillan (2004), among others.