[Summer 2026]
Camera and the city
by Stéphanie Yvette Hornstein
National Gallery of Canada | Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa
12.12.2025 — 15.03.2026
[EXCERPT]
Whenever the National Gallery of Canada rolls out an exhibition showcasing its photographic collection, all of photoland takes note – and with good reason. This time, the institution’s exceptional holdings have been explored along the versatile theme of the city. The whopping 185 works displayed offer a broad panorama of the diverse ways that urban spaces have been studied, pictured, and mobilized by photographers from the late nineteenth century until today. What emerges is a kaleidoscope of lively scenes and jagged skylines that any city-dweller will instantly recognize.
Given that 58 percent of the global population is currently concentrated in urban areas, according to the World Bank’s latest statistics, city life is arguably one of those universally relevant topics. But an exhibition of the world, this is not. Like many shows devoted to street photography, Camera and the City puts forward a rather New Yorkcentric (one might even say a MoMAcentric) narrative with Manhattan skyscrapers, Central Park portraits, and the usual suspects – Lee Friedlander, Diane Arbus, Weegee, and Lisette Model – all present and accounted for. There is, it must be said, a Canadian inflection to this presentation, which puts homegrown talent in conversation with some of the most canonical images of photographic history. Curiously, however, the very city that plays host to the exhibition, Ottawa, is almost entirely absent. Even the works on display by Jeff Thomas, the Onondaga photographer who has long called Canada’s capital his home, are street scenes of his birthplace, Buffalo. This seems a missed opportunity to show material from his Seize the Space series (2000–13), which speaks back to the Champlain monument that formerly stood just behind the National Gallery on Nepean Point. Now known as Kìwekì Point, this redeveloped park is a testament to the cultural transformations that projects like Thomas’s can inspire.
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[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 132 – TABLEAUX ]
[ Complete article in digital version available here: TITRE ARTICLE]
Stéphanie Yvette Hornstein est titulaire d’un doctorat en histoire de l’art de l’Université Concordia. Elle fait une maîtrise en bibliothéconomie et sciences de l’information à l’Université de Montréal.