Photographic Excellence at TOAF 2026!
- PhotoED Magazine
- 10 hours ago
- 4 min read
Photography highlights at TOAF65
The Toronto Outdoor Art Fair (TOAF) returns July 10–12 for its landmark 65th birthday.
As Canada's largest and longest-running outdoor art fair, TOAF promises a weekend filled with art, culture, and connection—and this year's edition is its most ambitious yet. Featuring more than 400 artists from across Canada, expanded national representation, major new exhibitions, live music and dance performances, and free admission, TOAF65 is a celebration not to be missed.
More than 400 emerging and established artists will participate in this year's Fair, including 75 artists from outside Ontario and 64 artists exhibiting exclusively online at TOAF.ca. Visitors can discover work across painting, craft and design, sculpture and installation, photography, and digital media. This exceptional roster was selected by an esteemed jury of arts professionals: Sandra Brewster, Suzanne Carte, Maria Kanellopoulos, and Jesse King.
TOAF also takes pride in an awards program unlike any other in Canada. In honour of its 65th year, the Fair will distribute more than $67,000 in cash and in-kind awards, creating opportunities for artists to advance their careers, receive public recognition, and strengthen their practices.
Look forward to winner announcements in the Photography & Digital Media category:
Best of Photography & Digital Media Award
$2,650, generously supported by Jennifer Longhurst and Lars Bendsen
Honourable Mention Photography & Digital Media
$650 gift card, generously supported by Total Image Works
PhotoED Magazine Award
Three recipients will receive a subscription to PhotoEd Magazine. One recipient will receive a Print Feature and artist honorarium.
To celebrate photoED Magazine's partnership with TOAF, we're highlighting a selection of photographers participating in this year's Fair. From documentary and portraiture to experimental and conceptual practices, these are a few of the artists we have our eye on at TOAF65…
Born in Taguig City, Philippines and now based in Moncton, New Brunswick, Ranz Bontogon’s work explores the complex interfaces of Filipino identity and migration in Canada. Bontogon’s use of traditional darkroom processes contributes to the quiet nostalgia of his work. This sense of memory also emerges through his sensitivity to composition; motion and stillness find balance in each piece, further contributing to the larger narrative of cultural identity and place.
Vancouver-based, first time TOAF artist, Lara Shecter is drawn to the stories embedded in landscapes. Working in acrylic and mixed-media, Shecter’s work is sensitive to perspective and depth, and through this, her compositions reveal the relationship between the human and the natural world. Shecter’s use of colour is surprising, yet somehow familiar, producing reimagined landscapes that capture a sense of shifting familiarity.
Chris Robinson specializes in conceptual, lifestyle, and portraiture photography, creating colourful, story-driven works that lean into the experience of memory. Robinson does not shy away from humour in his work, turning towards fuzzy warmth and lightheartedness to create a sense of whimsy that elevates mundane landscapes into cinematic snapshots.
Nika Belianina is an award-winning filmmaker and artist based in Toronto whose work is distinctly playful, peculiar, and profoundly human. To develop her unique sense of atmosphere, Belianina brings in elements of magical realism through a cinematic lens, producing work that walks the line between uncanny and entirely relatable. Belianina was the recipient of the Honourable Mention Photography and Digital Media Award at TOAF64.
Based in Ontario, Alicia Syne is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in painting and photography. Syne engages with themes of human connection and atmospheric energy and, in turn, the nature of identity. The blur between background and subject contribute to Syne’s unconventional, cosmic twist on portraiture, asking the viewer to consider their own relationship with the non-human world.
Part of OCAD U Career Launchers Program, Bree Rosenberg is an artist whose practice revolves around themes of memory and self-reflection. In her work, Rosenberg leans into conceptual and intention-based processes where she navigates the relationship between art, text, and dialogue. Rosenberg understands her work to be a process of healing through performance, and this is evident in her monochromatic, movement-focused compositions which depict the body in motion and obscure the face.
First generation Jamaican-Canadian artist, Jenelle Smith creates dreamlike expressions of passing moments. Smith is a recent graduate of OCAD U, and is now based in Toronto, Ontario, working primarily in digital and analog image-based media. Light and shadow, in Smith’s photographs, fall in patterns across landscapes and faces, contributing to the dreamy, playful aesthetic of her work.
Carolyn Cheng is a Toronto-based photographer whose work frames sublime environmental landscapes, photographing primarily from an aerial perspective. Cheng is interested in how the cyclical, enduring processes of the natural world react under the pressures of human consumption and the changing climate. Through scale and distance, natural patterns and colours emerge in Cheng’s work, reorienting perspective and asking the viewer to reconsider their relationship with the natural world.
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