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Image Arts Alumni

Visionaries:
Image Arts Wall of Fame

The School of Image Arts, previously named Photographic Arts, has over 5000 alumni including many with prominent and successful careers. The Image Arts Alumni Association created Visionaries: Image Arts Wall of Fame in 2018 to formally recognize some of the most outstanding alumni. These Visionaries have distinguished themselves with superior achievement in a professional career related to the field of image arts.

Image Arts - Alumni Hall of Fame: 2023 Inductees


Davida Nemeroff (IMA '04) is the founder and owner of Night Gallery in Los Angeles, California. She attended The School of Image Arts at Ryerson University from 2000-2004 and received her MFA from Columbia University in New York, New York in 2009. In 2010, she founded Night Gallery in a strip mall storefront in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Over the past 13 years, she has built a roster of emerging, mid-career, and established artists, including Claire Tabouret, Divya Mehra, Samara Golden, Tomashi Jackson, Robert Nava, and Wanda Koop. Nemeroff has gradually expanded the gallery, relocating its operations and ambitious programming to a campus near L.A.’s downtown arts district. Under her leadership, Night Gallery has gained international prominence while remaining a hub for the city’s thriving visual art community. Nemeroff’s own photography has been included in solo or two-person exhibitions at Cooper Cole, Toronto, Canada; Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, Toronto, Canada
; and Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA. 

Award-winning photographer/director Margaret Malandruccolo’s (IMA ’93) top obsessions have always been striking images, old cars, and delicious pizza. She has worked alongside legendary figures such as Prince, Danny Elfman, Lance Henriksen and Colm Wilkinson. Her heartfelt gratitude goes out to the creative souls who have shared their inspiration, like Alan Doyle, Jason McCoy, Dwight Yoakam, and Melanie Manson. Margaret continues to strive for peace and simplicity with her lovely family.

Michael Kennedy (IMA '78) has explored many significant social issues in his 23 feature films and 230 TV episodes which range from the legendary Kids In The Hall to the ground-breaking Little Mosque On The Prairie. He also directed a record 15 TV series “pilots”. Awards include 4 Canadian Screen Award nominations; the Canada Award for Diversity; 8 DGC Award nominations (2 wins); 1 DGA nomination; 11 Canadian Comedy Award nominations (3 wins); and a Canadian Music Video Award.

Daniel Ehrenworth (IMA '03) was born and raised in Ottawa and graduated from Image Arts in 2003 with a BFA in Photography Studies. He has worked as a gallery artist, curator, commercial photographer and video director. His gallery work has been exhibited at many galleries and artist-run centers across Canada. He has received numerous awards for his commercial work from the ADCC, American Photo, Applied Arts, Communication Arts, the D&AD, Luerzer’s Archive, and the National Magazine Awards.

Alan Goluboff (IMA '77) started to work as 1st AD on many films including Kissinger & Nixon, Silent Hill, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, K-19 the Widowmaker, The Love Guru, and Firestarter. He also directed episodic television including Destiny Ridge, Sue Thomas: F.B. Eye, and Traders, as well as Angels & Ornaments for the Hallmark Channel. Alan was National President of the DGC for eight years followed by five terms as Chair of DGC Ontario.

Image Arts - Alumni Hall of Fame: 2022 Inductees

Montreal-based John L’Ecuyer’s (IMA '94) first feature film, Curtis’s Charm, won the Jury Prize at TIFF and his four other features all premiered at TIFF.  L’Ecuyer has directed over 200 one-hour TV episodes for several Canadian and American networks and over a dozen MOWs including Prom Queen.  His Feature documentary Confessions of a Rabid Dog won Best Social Documentary at the HotDocs Festival. He also wrote the novel Use Once and Destroy (DAP 1997) about his years as a heroin addict.

Shortly after graduating in 2011, Amanda Row (IMA '11) was hired as a special unit director on Netflix’s first original series Hemlock Grove, thus starting her career in genre television. With a flair for SPFX and VFX, she has directed and produced over 40 episodes of some of the most unique series of the last decade, including Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The 100, DC’s Doom Patrol, Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger, Nancy Drew, Shadowhunters and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

 

Zanele Muholi (IMA '09) is a visual activist and photographer born in Umlazi, Durban, and living in Johannesburg. Muholi’s mission is ‘to re-write a black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in SA and beyond’. Their work is exhibited in the most prestigious museums in the world and they have received many international accolades, most recently the Spectrum International Prize for Photography. 

Jordan Tannahill (IMA '11) is a novelist, playwright, and director of film and theatre. His debut novel, Liminal, (external link)  won France’s Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners (external link) , was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. He has twice won Canada’s Governor General's Literary Award for Drama.  His virtual reality performances and  dance collaborations have won international acclaim.  In 2019, CBC Arts (external link)  named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.

Image Arts - Alumni Hall of Fame: 2021 Inductees

Kiana Hayeri (IMA '11) grew up in Iran before immigrating as a teenager to Toronto where she took up photography as a way of bridging the gap in language and culture. Her work explores complex topics such as migration, adolescence, identity and sexuality in war-ridden countries. She has won many international awards including the Robert Capa Gold Medal and she’s been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. Kiana is a regular contributor to The New York Times and National Geographic.

Kazik Radwanski’s (IMA '08) thesis short, Princess Margaret Blvd., had its international premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival and was named one of Canada's Top Ten Shorts by TIFF.  His first two features, Tower, and How Heavy This Hammer, were both festival favourites as well. His most recent feature, Anne at 13,000 ft, premiered at TIFF 2019 and was awarded the $100,000 Rogers Best Canadian Film Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association.

Adrienne Mitchell (IMA ’84) is a Director and Showrunner who has been creating auteur-driven drama series for over 25 years. Her shows Durham County, Bomb Girls, Bellevue and Coroner have been nominated for or won dozens of awards and she has personally been nominated or won both a Director’s Guild of Canada Award and a Canadian Screen Award for Best Director. She also received the 2017 Nell Shipman Award for directorial achievement and for advancing gender equity.

Balint Zsako (IMA '02) was born in Budapest in 1979, immigrated to Canada when he was 10 and eventually studied Photography at Image Arts.  The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art organized a traveling exhibition of his works accompanied by the artist’s first monograph.  He was long listed for The Sobey Award, Canada's largest art prize & is featured in Jason Schmidt's Artists 2 photographic survey.  His picture book “Bunny & Tree” will be published in 2023 by Enchanted Lion Books.

Image Arts - Alumni Hall of Fame: 2020 Inductees

Nyla Innuksuk

Nyla Innuksuk (IMA '09) is the founder of Mixtape VR which produces Virtual Reality content. A writer for Marvel Comics, Innuksuk co-created the character of Snowguard, a teenage superhero from Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Most recently Nyla wrote and directed her first feature film titled Slash/Back, an alien invasion horror about a group of teen girls from the Arctic. In 2019 Innuksuk was named one of the top 5 To Watch by Playback Magazine. 

Miroslaw Baszak (IMA ’88) studied theatre in his native Poland and worked as an actor in experimental theatre before coming to Canada and commencing his studies in the film program at Ryerson. His break in the film business came from fellow Wall of Famer, Bruce McDonald, who hired him to shoot his first feature film, Roadkill. Since then, Miroslaw has developed a vast body of award-winning work encompassing commercials, music videos, feature films and television.

Shin Sugino (IMA ’71) was born in Osaka, Japan, and emigrated to Canada to study at Ryerson.  In 1986 he began his extraordinarily successful advertising photography studio, Sugino Studio.  He pioneered digital shooting and imaging in Toronto and has won countless awards internationally including advertising gold at Cannes in 1998 and 2002 and Cyber Gold in 2006.  In 2018 he was awarded the Les Usherwood Life Time Achievement Award by the Advertising Club of Toronto.

Phil Bergerson (IMA ’70) has been photographing and exhibiting internationally for over 45 years. His work is represented in many prestigious collections, including the National Gallery of Canada and the Bibliothéque Nationale in Paris. His photographs have been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. His first book, Shards of America was published in 2004 to rave reviews. For 33 years he was also an award-winning professor in the Image Arts Department.

Ruth Kaplan is a documentary-based photographer whose work explores a variety of themes such as the social behaviour of bathers in communal hot springs and bathhouses, participants in rituals of spirituality and more recently the transient status surrounding refugees seeking asylum in Canada while living in shelters in Buffalo, Detroit, Toronto and Fort Erie, through photographs, interviews and videos reflecting the slow passage of time within this extended limbo. In addition to an extensive background in editorial photography, Kaplan has exhibited internationally with work in major Canadian and international collections and publications. She is a recipient of numerous grants and awards and currently teaches at OCAD University and Toronto Metropolitan University. Her first book, Bathers, was recently published by Damiani. Images from the series on bathers will be exhibited during the upcoming Scotiabank Contact photo festival.

Image Arts - Alumni Hall of Fame: 2019 Inductees

2019 TMU Alumni Achievement Award recipient, Jeremy Podeswa, Image Arts '84

Wall of Fame 2019 Inductee - Che Kothari

Che Kothari (IMA ’05) became known for intimate portrait sessions with many notable musicians and artists.  He also created the non-profit organization, Manifesto Community Projects, which does award-winning work with young people, and the annual Manifesto Festival and its sister organizations of Manifesto in Jamaica and NYC.

Wall of Fame 2019 Inductee - MaryAnn Camilleri

MaryAnn Camilleri (IMA '91) created the Magenta Foundation, a trailblazing charitable arts-publishing house that showcases the work of talented artists on a global scale. It draws attention to under-represented and emerging artists with powerful exhibitions and a roster of impressive international publications. 

Wall of Fame 2019 Inductee - Yuri Dojc

Yuri Dojc (IMA '74) Yuri’s multi-lens trajectory has pivoted from an established commercial photography practice to his current gaze as an artful observer of the vestiges of history’s most vulnerable.  Since the late 1990s, he has been documenting Slovakia's last living Holocaust survivors and the country’s abandoned synagogues, schools, and cemeteries for a series called Last Folio.

Wall of Fame 2019 Inductee - Bruce McDonald

Bruce McDonald (IMA ’82) attended Ryerson in the 70’s and went on to become one of Canada’s greatest filmmakers known for his irreverent, eclectic style and his love of music and pop culture. After breaking out with his debut feature Roadkill, he has gone on to direct many other acclaimed films including Hard Core Logo, The Tracy Fragments and Pontypool. 

Wall of Fame 2019 Inductee - Frieder Hochheim

Freider Hochheim (IMA ’77) worked in the industry as a gaffer primarily on feature films which led his creative mind to invent a color correct fluorescent lighting system called Kino Flo. This innovative system rapidly changed the way movies were made and resulted in an Academy Award for technical achievement In 1995.

Image Arts - Alumni Hall of Fame: 2018 Inductees

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky (IMA ’82) is one of the world’s most respected contemporary photographers and his award-winning depictions of industrialized landscapes are featured in over sixty major museums worldwide.

Jeremy Podeswa

Jeremy Podeswa (IMA ’84) wrote and directed three award-winning feature films before becoming one of the top television directors in the world, nominated four times for Emmy Awards for shows like Game of Thrones.

Pia Di Ciaula

Pia Di Ciaula (IMA ’92) is an internationally renowned film and television editor whose recent credits include Tyrannosaur and The Crown, Netflix's multi-BAFTA, Emmy and Golden Globe winning series.

Stephen Bulger

Stephen Bulger (IMA ‘91) owner/operator of the Stephen Bulger Gallery, represents photography at the highest level having curated over 150 exhibitions and published many catalogues and books.

Peter Mettler

Peter Mettler (IMA ’82) holds a unique position for his innovative merging of cinema with other disciplines and his film, Picture Of Light, was recently selected by TIFF as one of Canada’s Essential 150 Canadian Films.