
Faculty Lead, Art Pathways
Faculty Lead, Gallery 881 x Emily Carr
Faculty Lead, Capture x Emily Carr Fall 2021
Birthe Piontek is a visual artist who works in photography, sculpture, and drawing. Her photographic practice explores the interconnections between photographic images, history, and personal and collective memory.
Piontek’s work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Canada, the United States, Europe, and South America and is featured in many private and public collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Museum of Applied Arts in Gera, Germany.
Piontek is the author of several photography books. The project The Idea of North won the Critical Mass Book Award in 2009 and was published by Photolucida in 2011. Her project Abendlied received the Edward Burtynsky Grant in 2018 and was nominated by Time Magazine as one of the best photo books in 2019. Her third book, Janus, was published in 2021, and her newest project, Zero Hour, will be released in 2024.
Piontek received her MFA from the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. She lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she is an Associate Professor of Photography at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.