Fans of the photographic arts have a unique opportunity to own an equally unique book of black and white photography.
The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies has for sale 100 copies of Legacy: Twenty Years of Global Black & White Photography produced by Scotia Waterous and Scotiabank.
Scotia Waterous and Scotiabank have published a fine-art photography book each year for the past 20 years as a gift for select clients throughout the world. Each year, the project focuses on the work of one photographer.
Craig Richards, curator of photography at the Whyte Museum, said only 2,000 copies of these high-quality books are produced each year. But in conjunction with The Photographers of Scotia Waterous, an exhibition currently on display at the Whyte Museum, Adam Waterous, global head of investment banking for Scotiabank and head of Scotia Waterous, donated the copies to the Whyte.
All proceeds from the sale of these books will go towards the purchase of contemporary photography for the Whyte’s collection.
“They’ve never done this before,” Richards said of the donation. “It’s for us to sell with 100 per cent of proceeds going to collect contemporary photography for the fine art collection of the Whyte Museum.
“You cannot get this book anywhere. It is not available in any bookstore or anywhere else.”
Legacy, being the 20th book, features four photographs from each of the previous 19 photographers, including Richards, featured in the series.
The Scotia Waterous photography program is as unique as the book and the opportunity to buy one, Richards said.
“I have not heard of another support towards the photographic arts in the sense of 20 years of producing books anywhere. It’s not unprecedented, but I have not heard of another series like this.”
The first book featured Richards’ work and from there moved on to feature the work of George Webber, whose lens is focused on the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan. It then grew in scope to profile a different region of Canada. Once that had been accomplished, the program turned to U.S. and international photographers.
“The support given to photographers around the world has been phenomenal. There’s no doubt it projects you onto another level, especially the quality that they have done these things and on that aspect, it’s huge. Any of the photographers would say this has been a monumental footnote in their careers,” Richards said.
In the book’s introduction, Adam Waterous wrote that they chose to feature the work of previously unpublished photographers as a way to “either launch a photographer’s career or inject some further vitality into it along the way…
“We believed that business could help art photographers and we wanted to pay tribute to countries where we conducted business,” he wrote.
In this day of ebooks and print-on-demand, high-quality photography books are becoming a rarity that are increasingly expensive to produce.
“We are so grateful for the 100 books that Scotia has donated,” Richards said. “What I think is interesting is it shows the broad spectrum of what they have done in the past 20 years. It isn’t just landscape. It shows the global aspect of where we are.
“Now we have an opportunity to do something that benefits the photographers as well as grow the collection,” he said.
Legacy: Twenty Years of Global Black & White Photography is available for $50.
The Photographers of Scotia Waterous exhibit closes March 30.
