The Canada Council for the Arts has announced alumna Carol Sawyer as the recipient of the 2017/18 Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. The prize is awarded to a professional photographer for personal creative work or professional development and is the sole Canada Council prize dedicated to photography.

Carol Sawyer is a visual artist and singer who works with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990s her visual art work has been concerned with the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory and history. She performs regularly with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo (with whom she has released three CDs) and in other ad hoc improvising ensembles. She received a Diploma (Honours) in Photography from Emily Carr University in 1982, and her MFA from the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University in 1998. Carol is represented by Republic Gallery, Vancouver.

Funding for this prize was donated by the Government of Canada on the occasion of the wedding of Prince Andrew in 1986.

Congratulations Carol!