Claudia Beck, along with Andrew Gruft, was the founder of the pioneering photography gallery NOVA in 1976. Ms. Beck and Mr. Gruft continued to collect photographs and in 2004 made a large donation from their collection to the Vancouver Art Gallery, and have continued to gift works to the institution on a regular basis. Ms. Beck has served on the Vancouver Art Gallery Board and was chair of the Acquisitions Committee; she was also on the Getty’s Photo Council in Los Angeles. Monte Clark’s participation in Capture gave her the opportunity to look at a medium where artists’ practices have kept changing over the years—appropriation, video, digitalization, painting—leaving the question “what is a photograph.”
